I want to feel your fingers
on my skin. You kisses linger
on my lips. The baritone timbre
of your voice lulls me to heavenly slumber.

Found you one night
I was clearing out
My parents' medicine cabinet
Red drops protruded from your spout
Like crimson petals of a thorny rose

I saved you, of course
Unlike the others you weren't expired
Not yet -- none the worse
For wear, and I put you on my bedside
I had a feeling I'd need you

Insomnia is a fickle fiend
Nights are the worst
Searching for a friend
Because without one I was cursed
To doom away the dusk until dawn

And then you called,
"You got a friend in me,"
And I answered
And red drops flowed into my mouth
Like the kisses of a fallen cherub

This bottle was doomed to crack anyway.

Mutterings and murmurs all inane
Tabletops keep turning, turning round
I do think I have gone insane

Polychords create a dissonant chain
Of ghastly nails-on-chalkboard sounds
Mutterings and murmurs all inane

Dysfunctional symphony in a hellish train
Along the way to iniquitous underground
I do think I have gone insane

We stop; the left man pulls me into acid rain,
And we waltz in an urban burial ground
Mutterings and murmurs all inane

Fleshy neurons dance vapidly in my brain
Amber, scarlet, vermilion flames abound
I do think I have gone insane

Macabre figures gather and dance in the nefarious fain
They put thistles and roses on my head; I am crowned.
Mutterings and murmurs all quite inane
I do think I have gone insane

He follows in the footsteps of a dead man,
a wild man, an ill-tempered storm
who lashed out at the world so he wouldn’t conform
to the ordinary life from which he ran.

Now that man is dead as an empty beer can.
He follows anyway, trudges on through the lukewarm
waters in his wake; trudges on to deform
the monotony from which his life began.

He thinks he may as well be wed
to his drinks and his smokes and the girls in his bed
all faceless and nameless and only marginally alive.

He never wants to know that absolute dead
feeling that lurks in people’s heads.
He wants the blood in his veins to pump, his soul to thrive.

Gunning down horses, gunning down tails,
Gunning down archaic forces
That follow my nightmares through the eve
With its eye on my hilt and its back to its siege

I run and I run and I am never done
If I stop now, I stop for eternity
I lay waste on the Cimmerian horizon
And I drink to the gaps in my vision.

Fire crackles, sizzles like a tortured
Monk; Charcoal smoke lifts the air,
Turns the trees black and navy blue
As putrid smoke buries itself in my hair

The fire is my only hope now
I tell you they can’t see it
Their eyeless sockets will never know
And they’ll never find me here.

Shrouded by hunger and malice,
Daybreak shatters the sword,
Daybreak shatters the chalice;
The mirror sings seven years; its word
Is eternal so seven years shall pass
Before its flimsy voice cries relief
And forgives the girl in desolate dress.
Spare us immortal grief.
Bend and bend and please do not break
Your sanity, your staple, your soul is at stake.

Do me a favour and close my eyes
So I can dream ten thousand dreams
Under the light of fireflies

When the sun in all its glory lies
Nighttime rips the sky lit seams
Do me a favour and close my eyes

Crimson wine dribbles as I sigh
Down my lips, it forms a stream
Under the light of fireflies

I treasure silence over desolate ‘whys’
As it hints not at wicked schemes
Do me a favour and close my eyes

Stars shine daggers at my demise
Shadows grieve; they weep, they scream
Under the light of fireflies

Life will live until it dies
And stains these sheets so white as cream
Do me a favour and close my eyes
Under the light of fireflies

The moon looks so lonely.
The stars are so far away.
They have no words to say
To a hunk of earthly rock.

I am an invalid down here;
Ghost water trickles innocently
From glacial eyes that are
Opened wide from mellowed fear

Stars waltz out of the sky.
They point, they laugh, they mock,
And it is sad the way they do so.

Sometimes I wish I could fly,
Defy the physics of earthly clocks,
So that I could go to the moon and restore its glow.

Lonely words on paper sing
Black ink sways to and fro
I staple the sheets to hand them in
At nine o’clock tomorrow

Lonely words on paper sing
Praises of a higher kind, although
These fall off their papery wings
Down they spiral, down they go

And hell it burns these wondrous things
Lonely words on paper lie
So for their errors, for their sins
Consumed by flame, their praises die

Sweet, juicy, crunchy apples;
Dark red roses
With petals as soft as love's sensitive skin.

(And black poison.)
(And black thorns.)

Good.
Bad.
A very thin line.