hello, executioner
hello starlight, hello pillager
make me a village
give me pitchforks give me haybales i will give you a show
brand new, glitter stuck shiny on the sign out front crying havoc
crying
"hello executioner lead me to the
slaughter"
you menace
isnt this a sight?
twenty-five love letters to a guillotine and a girl you killed
seven hundred years ago
advertising strategy number thirty-four: **** your neighbor
**** everyone you know and then **** yourself
are you jealous? are your eyes open?
i can hear your nose bleeding from here
(twenty-five love letters addressed to a dead person
oh god oh god,
can your hear the water rush)
the disposal is running in the sink
"what are you a robot"
stop talking about anarchy this isnt a drug bust
two white balloons and blood on the ceiling
haven't you ever seen a dead body before?

my obscurity was of a different vein than yours
and while moonshine hasn’t lasted this long in ages
I’ll still drink every drop until my body glows
pulsating with every beat of my
accidental heart

hiding was easiest before you showed
me all the colours you created
before your dirigibles dribbled drowsily
across my accidental skies

you haven’t found me yet
not one single atom
our subatomic particles weren’t made for
contact in a world too close to reality
and while our breaths had yet to align

i’ll keep breathing
and every beat of my accidental heart
will serve as the countdown to collision,
the nuclear fusion to bring me out of this twilight
and into the definitive
if diminutive
light of night fall

pipe organs take deeper breaths than you.
collect.
i don’t weave you into forms you don’t know how to embody and you don’t breathe words into my lungs that my tongue cannot form.
avarice.
you think my arms not as they are but as you understand them, and you wish they were the same thing.
begin.
i’ll hold you into perdition, remission, partition,
and there isn’t a soul on this earth who can do it the way i can.
concede.
there is more to you than the times you didn’t die.
bygones beget brokenness, insects don’t lift a finger, and we don’t breathe the way you do.
trust doesn’t allow for transgressions.
resuscitate, alleviate.
dreamscapes drift fitfully and i didn’t think of anything first, not even you.
rewind.
you’re impossible, but i always loved when my mother wrote fairytales.

racked across her burning shoulders
i was the pig but on a flaming spire
so close to the ethereal cotton.
i was suffocating
and only a snap of the neck or a crack of the joints
provided a release of oxygen that set us aflame.
we don't belong here and the belittling braces
our salivating frontal lobes. it's still too dry,
and from this moment on, how could this moment bring
more tears than my own death? i float atop the spire once more
to lay, to decay, and to fade faster than the last words
you spoke to me.

the rainstick is home-made
from second grade when they tried to make us cultured
and the paper towel tube it is constructed of
is frayed at either mouth
and peeling along the sides.
the construction paper that closes it is fading
started fading some time ago from all those days
spent on your shelf
and when you held it in your hands
i remember the way you knuckles looked
like little brass doorknobs all smooth and polished

i remember your sand dune curves and how
my fingers used to be the Sahara desert wind
sliding along the grains and making small dips and dents
in your pliable softness
those same curves could stop wars and end world hunger
i was sure of it
and hardly a day went by when i neglected to tell you that

you once gave me a journal that was leather bound
with creamy pages whose grey lines begged to be set under
a fountain pen and even though you knew
that i only liked my work when i wrote
about you, on the inside cover you scribbled:
for the days when i am no longer beside you—
they will come. they will come

the only love song i have ever enjoyed is the
sound of april showers whose droplets
fall gently on the roof
like the landings of a million experienced parachuters
because it reminds me of the rain stick
which you left on my bookshelf
on your way out

When the shadows overtake me
I hope my throat is already slit.

/MERCY.

I've learned by now
That fast and painless
Is a concept of fiction.

It wouldn't matter
If you were to tear out my heart
Or rip out my spine,
It's all death just the same.

If you choose to take my life,
Don't take mercy into consideration,
Because mercy has been long lost
On those already rotting
In the graves dug in their minds.

/CONSUMPTION.

Peace from the darkness
Has taken the shape
Of your hand on the goblet,
With all my absolution taking the form
Of your loving embrace.

Let's build up our legions,
Show them the light in our gospel,
And convert them to our truth...

Such a beautiful proposition,
If we could work it out ourselves.

Wash over me with your holy sermon.

Let me absorb all your light.

Reconstruct all my arrogance
Upon the backs of the broken,
Just for the rare opportunity
For such a picture perfect landscape.

Monarchy never looked so stunning.

/EMPIRE.

Drowning is becoming an art.

Deeper and deeper
Into the depths do I venture,
All the while indifferent
To my lack of oxygen.

I'm plugging in plot holes.

I'm re-founding Byzantium,
And all for the iconography
That has left me
In such a state of marvel.

I don't want compromise
Or pity of any sort.

I just want you in tidal waves,
And to get pulled deeper
Beneath the whole of your personality.

In a modern world
So short on imperialism
Why was it so easy for you
To colonize my heart?

/TRANSLATION.

For the first time in years,
I need no translation.

I speak clearly, openly,
And without filtration.

She both listens and hears,
And that's not even the beginning
Of her infinite positive traits.

She's a modern masterpiece,
So above modern art.

I want to dissolve into her brilliance
If for even a moment.

/RECOIL.

I have nothing to fear.

I am the God of Death...
I am the shadows
That haunt even the deepest corners
Of my recuperating mind.

I'm gaining back the strength
To show the world once more,
That there are better, truer
Forms of evil in our control.

I am the culmination
Of the lives I have taken,
And now I choose to never
Be frightened by fate again.

I am the God of Death,
And now I choose to live.

The coroner called to ask how I am but i told him I’m not

You had two pillows in the house that you used, one
in the bedroom and one in the living room and while
I washed the other one three times to get your smell
out, the other i have yet to touch because
you’re coming home soon.

The coroner called to ask how I am but I told him I was.

The flowers didn’t bloom this year until midway through
May and I remembered because you begged me
to buy them and now they stretch their arms out on the
window box outside my bedroom, respect for
punctuality lost in a similar way that mine was.
I cut them down before they could reach their full
height and I gathered the clippings in a bag, burning
them the way they burned you.

The coroner called to ask how I am but I told him I’m trying to be.

Your sister came over the other day and asked for your
collection of playing cards because she said it was yours
and hers, that she had found most of them for you on road
trips and holidays. I remembered the way
she looked at me the first time you introduced us
and I shuffled a deck last night and could hear your voice
counting as you dealt.
I gave them to her anyway and thought I was signing a deal with the Devil.

The coroner called to ask how I am and I told him I’m barely.

Your shoes sit footless and your pants sit legless and I sit
you-less and cross-legged in your closet all that day, trying to
remember how to breathe.

The coroner called to ask how I am and I told him I’m almost.

The magnet on the fridge is crooked because the strip on the
back fell apart when you ran into that towering
block of tundra while chasing your niece and it fell to the
floor with a sharp crack.
I repaired it last Saturday and set it straight.