you felt like a new texture, a fabric i'd never slipped through before,
but darling,
you and i are merely old habits gussied up in
tulle and a paper mache artifice - ghoul masquerading as prima ballerina
fouette for me baby, twirl me dizzier than a whirling dervish
and flounce me on my head to spin out over this choreographed failure.

i've shoveled so much chocolate in my mouth-hole this weekend
i think i'm rotting from the inside out,
made of only sugar blisters and quicksand sores
that are bursting new caverns to life
crafting a base relief depiction of my longing into my throat,
how deliciously destructive!

i'm loony-eyed swooning over this 90-watt moon replica
and these reflector paint stars!
oh, i think i'll trade the entire night sky for this masterpiece
and a macrame bandage for my chest,
much more utilitarian than the atmosphere i drown in these days.

my reckless howling and witchcrafting whimsy
have loosed my lungs from their cage,
wheezing out an incantation into the far-reaching wind,
Everest is ablaze under my spell
sobbing it's ice into the earth and
melting it's bones to ash in my palms.

some men just want to watch the world burn,
i, however, merely want to reconstruct it
from the bottom, up
shoveling all of its innards to the surface
and making the unseen
known.

i want to ***** out everything held inside of me,
yank the remnant gunpowder from my throat
and load a pistol to destroy the ghosts that crawl forth
from the cramped black holes of my memory.
The sound of your name makes my vision turn crimson
and my feet cling to the ceiling.
What you did
is too much
for me to carry,
haunting me in ways i do not understand
morphing me into creatures i cannot bury.

i never even notice you've seeped into something,
until its too late.
i surface gasping in the middle of a fit of confusion
to realize that your grubby, sticky hands
are tainting
my every movement
waking
and
sleeping,
dancing
my legs on puppet strings.
Iron-locked hinges control my hips opening,
closing,
opening,
rusted and stuck in a position i refused,
a place i did not agree to be folded into.
Weighted down by the heaviness of you
your mass
your gravity
bulldozing me into glass shards, and blindly
mixing my fragments
with
mud
and dust
and
ashen debris.

A resin of my innards is caked dry
under your ragged fingernails.
They snag at the holes in my tights
and i feel the unwashable stickiness of me
skid
against my skin.
The room is pitch black
but i can see splotched neon demons
lurking in the corner behind my back.
And the gurgling of the television
is harmonizing with my rasping,
and my tired anger,
in a key i can't decipher,
although it sounds minor.
What an ominous overtone, dangling
over our dizzy heads.
Stop trying to scare me,
soften me into your arms.

I am the monster in this room, remember?!?!
There is almost too much guilt
in my sandy mouth
to make room for another insistent plea.
Stop.
STOP.
I
am
not
joking.
I
am
not
a
joke.
I
am
not­
a
target.
Or something
to crush
and ****
up your nose.

i'm much too grotesque for any of that.
I'm the monster here, remember?

i fear i am
translucent
and
forgettable.
a vapor that is constantly
dispensing
and
dissipating,
accidentally breathed in by absent-minded victims.
forming weak phlegm at the back
of numb throats,
coughed out with the thought of too many cigarettes.

there are some things that do not wash from skin.
even more that can stain a mind
beyond the finesse of chemical cocktails or fire to purify.
birth marks and blood omens and
calling cards of demonic henchmen.
harmless helicopter seeds shed
flakes into a ****** garden,
a second-hand inoculation, mute until retroactively
activated.
a forged acquiescence
to a sprouting voice of dissent:

                                                "you?we­ren't you wise enough to know?
you, fortune-teller, mystic mistress, reader of skies, you
how did your intuition lead you blindfolded into a werewolf's den?
you, knowing the heart's riddled map of blood,
you, knowing the incessant looping of events,
you, knowing the enthralling
addiction of desire, shame on you, after all,
boys will be boys - don't pretend
you did not suspect it of your friends, too.
sayings are rooted in truth,
and themes on that mantra have been force-fed to you since age five, you swallowed
that pill dry (remember? throat surrendering its gag-reflex
like a good little girl, masking the strain) and its been re-administered
in endless refrain
as medicine, as supplication, as pledge, as training - don't you act surprised.
by the ripe and raw pulsation of twenty-two
you
have surely learned the golden rule:
your body
was not built
for you.
your skin,
your flesh,
your
body is:
a pilgrimage to grasp the heat of god,
a beacon on moonless nights,
a temple to spill hungry prayers upon,
an ancient altar of blood sacrifice.
honor your obligation, your tribute, your destiny.
submit to the iron-rod trademark upon your breast.
it will not wash clean, trust me, there are some things
that do not wash from skin."

even more that can claim a mind.

I curse my body daily.
Waking up with the sky, my tongue
lashes red sunrises onto my thighs,
my lungs vacuum a familiar
poisonous plume. Oh!
the relief of mortality!
the sturdy promise of decay!
An ancient blood pact with the moon
turns me sour at her zenith,
and I slink down in my weather-torn coffin
smirking with anticipation.
Crashing waves of maggots pour
over and through me,
shaving away this amorphous effigy
to dust, debris.
Released back to the soil,
soaked in dew,
reformed in clumps by absent-minded shoes,
bled dry by stelliferous roots of sycamores -
my body giving birth to life
in ways I never could before,
in ways only revealed to me
by death
the spurious specter becomes pure again.