innocence lost, my
own vision clouded,
drifting light and tired shadows,
draped upon
the rifts and valleys
of my soul

o desire, you terrible mistress
queen of heart-flung whispers
lit like snowflakes on
a far and rocky
shore
swept up and melted by a
wave more cold than ice
kept warm with salt...

i don't know my own thoughts
anymore
i ran a blade across my skin
in wonder at the thought
that it could be an
answer
for anyone. it will never be for me

still i am lost in a maze of light and sparkling fire
all around
i reach for it
but the further i stretch
the emptiness of gall within expands

i'm leaving behind the best parts of me
when i travel into darkness,
i'm tying up and torturing the corners of
my mind
i thought i'd know ahead of time
where all the pain would
take me,
down this sad, **** rabbit-hole

but no one in a million years could
ever show me just how much
i'd like this terror to be
freed from what was
once a
tired freedom left
behind
by broken chains

is there one spark of truth in
a single thing i say?
or is it all the flurry of
senseless dreams
refurbished by a mind that
lives and sleeps and drinks and dies
with words.

i didn't mean to find a flower
on my journey through the forest
but there it was
trying
to bloom in a
crevice of the rock

We're dancing on a
knife's edge,
you and I.
You know it - I can see
the sparkle in your eye.

But do we care? I suppose
there's somewhere deep
down in
where mind sits at its desk
and all the glaring danger signs
flash red.
But on the surface, there's a
bit of gold in knowing
where we stand
for now,
and being free to dance the line
with comfort in your friendship yet
excited
all the same.

We know where we stand:
it's not together,
so we're free to tap the
dance floor lightly
and
smile into the night,
because our words are sparring
in -
well, let's say they
might have crossed the line.

But just our words.
We two?
We're standing side by side
(this side of the line)
and laughing at them,
pointing out the silliness
yet somehow still content
to stay and watch them
anyway
for lingered moments that speak
more deeply
than the words themselves could ever do.

The heavens warred
above us,
for decades at a time:
with blazing lights at midnight,
and
shadows stalking past at noon.

We took shelter in the depths,
left our children in their
graves.
The old and weak among us
fell beneath

the dying
of
the gods.

Towers tall as mountains,
walls once thick and strong,
cities split like gemstones
by the fountains bursting through.

Scorching heat,
flames born of wind,
the air around us burning,
the deepest depths our
only
refuge from the fallen
fusing forms.

Cold, both long and bitter
followed,
all our caverns covered over.
Unceasing was our journey
and to stall was
certain death.

In time the final judgment came,
and heralds marched the skies.
The soft sweet glow of
sunset,
and the trumpet call of
dawn.
Day by day the rivers swelled,
and life crept up again
through white.

The final moment of the battle came,
with the shudder of a curse,
and the body of a demon
flung from God's sweet
afterglow.

His body left a trail of ash
wind found the bits and swept them,
day by day they sifted
ever closer to our earth.
The rest of him, a smoking wreck,
destroyed our tallest mountain,
fire rose from it
for years,
and then settled into smoke.

Until the dragons woke.
Then came the end.

every moment I sit
on the edge
twiddling my thumbs
right next to insanity

tender lies, spoken
in whisper,
root themselves within
and spread moments of weakness
all dolled up as
strength.

I know the thrill
of falling

deeply

into the heart of
abandon,
headfirst, the warm
and gentle darkness
keeping my eyes in place,
fixed upon it:

my broken and perverted
crucifix

many hands stretched out to wound him,
reaching for the God of Souls.

so mine reach out to claim her,
clamoring
for the sweet ungodly savor of my
goddess
and the beggarly delighting
of her tender gaze on me.

perverse pageantry,
the ritual of very God above
imitated in the wasting
of this ******'s
soul.

stretched out for all to see,
just like he.
pierced through and bleeding
from head, heart, hands, and feet -
so she is pierced
for me.

not to save, but to delight.
uplifting?

bringing low
+

blasphemy, you say?
indeed.
of the deepest and the darkest
dye,
conceived in hell, the devil's spawn of this idea
swam upward to life through
layers of molten lies.

they burn, unceasing.

If you could tear one part of you and cast it far away, what ***** would you...

...fool! think not
escape to find without a light
trust not
the fickle heart to leave any part of you to lie severed
in the cold for long.
you'd search for it, and find in reunion cause
for celebration of the
darkest kind.

lay flat instead
upon the sun-pocked surface of this lightless planet
that you call a soul.
lay bare your helplessness
to the falling stars
and take the fatal blow that falls down
from on high.

no life without death,
no freedom without a brand
new set of chains.
do you actually believe it possible to change,
without such bitter pangs?

undo your only hold on life
and in the process gain
a claim to thrones eternal
and the everlasting
flame.
+

shadows of the devil's crucifix are haunting me.
desire, love, and beauty lick their lips
and wait for me.
but shifting like the broken
veil within, the pageantry I see
unfolds,
mist falls away; reality breaks free.

the shattered, broken
body of a god,
hangs limply on a tree.
lightning flashes, and a flood of unrefracted clarity
destroys the feathered patchwork
of my soul.

held aloft before him,
I scream.
forced to watch the devil's prodding,
dancing in their glee

I can never, never be free.
compelled by love more fierce than fire,
inflamed with all the agony of
purifying blood,
I lay a hand upon him,
and I weep like God above.

all this for me;                    
         all this,
                                            for heaven's enemy.