Swallow all the salty sea
Pouring out the heart of me.
Suffocate in all you hate,
Radiate and fade away.
Sink into eternity,
The vice grip of mortality.
Leave me with new lungs to breathe,
Save me so that I may grieve.

Beneath the tough,
       Fraying keratin
       Atop my porcelain digits,

Is you.

Shrinking.
Forgetful.
Perfect.

When you,
The swollen flesh below my fingernails,
Breathe,
I feel the sting of Nitrogen,
                         Oxygen,
                         Argon,
Circulating about my
                              Vulnerable
                                               Exposed
                                                             Tissue.
The sting is subtle.
The sting is beautiful.
I strip layer upon layer of tough,
Fraying keratin
Just to feel you respire.
With every advance into your territory,
You retreat.
Fortify the barrier.

We war until you are nothing but bare,
                                  Tender tissue,
      Bleeding brilliant red fear,
        Surrounded by delicate,
                                                    Pale,
                                                         Porcelain,
                                                                     Skin.
And it is all so beautiful.
            The image.
            The pain.
            You.

I wonder if I am beneath the tough,
       Fraying keratin,
       Atop your porcelain digits.

S(hr)unken into the polyester sea,
Just South of the TV,
I'm free.
Nodding to a muted query,
Rotting at the core.

Rusted silver on the table,
Emptied barrel proves I'm stable,
Life feels like a dreamy fable,
Not one muscle sore.

Freckles and hairs wait for a train,
Whose tracks I've laid to ease my pain,
Whose tracks I lay from vein to vein,
My tool belt on the floor.

Anxious commuters itch and crawl,
Ignite my routine twitch and drawl,
With which my soul they do enthrall,
And send me into war.

Mind and body disconnected,
Mind and body both infected,
Somewhere I can't be detected,
Nowhere anymore.

On an old spring mattress,
With stale, wrinkled sheets,
Two gripping green moons keep me sane.
The bed that I've wished would lull me below ground,
Is where her majesty, the universe, eases my pain.

In her deep, soft black I am mesmerized.
By her eyes like moons I am hypnotized.
And suddenly, in spite of its ancient coils,
The mattress fits neatly my shape and size.

She rhythmically plucks at the bed with her claws,
To inspire the beat of my heart.
Beneath sheets where I've dreamt of a tomb and a hearse,
She offers to me a fresh start.
Those gripping green gods that I find in her eyes,
Give me valid reason to dread my demise,
And that soft, silky fur,
Even blacker than space,
Soothes the black in my soul I wish I could erase.

I was prepared for the day that we would lie side by side beneath six feet of soil,
our skeletal fingers interlocking.

Should anyone ever observe us in our ignorant bliss,
they might think that we were smiling,
because beneath the maggot-eaten flesh that was once sculpted in the mortician's aesthetic
would be two divinely relieved souls whose hearts' content would refuse to be disguised.

They would see our hollow chests, and never imagine that they were once shelter to the two most fervent hearts of our time.

Staring at our cold and bare remains, they may not even momentarily ponder the idea that we were already familiar with the presence of one another in our slumber.

They wouldn't guess that we were accustomed to feeding off of each other's body heat in the dead of night,
or that our hearts beat in rhythm with each other's dreams.

They would not know how for years we had practiced every night
in preparation for our eternal rest.

Stained with the smell of cigarettes,
4,000 chemicals I'll never forget,
Like lies in the eyes of your mother and father,
A stain on the lungs of their innocent daughter,
Whose truths will now seep out like tar,
And swallow trust in their cancerous scar,
But lo' and behold the teeth of they,
Which by the same rot have already decayed.

This finger is much less a digit than it is a tool.
It is a tool with which I attempt to scrape your presence from the inside of my throat.
Your name swells like a tidal wave in my stomach,
And sends a surge of flotsam emotion into my esophagus.
With every heave of the sloppy sea comes some sick sense of satisfaction.
But alas, the sea is vast.

I am the dirt collected beneath the rat's claws.
Worse yet, I am the bubonic plague that he carries.
I am the stench of bodies burning,
And the force that compelled the Manson girls.

A hangnail that ends beyond your cuticle,
I wish I could say it hasn't happened before.
It feels like I'm rotting on the backburner,
On everyone's backburner.
It feels like payback for the years of dust I've let them collect.
I've lost my touch; I can't sell it like I'm busy.
I just don't care to sell it at all.

The most innocent
Cloud of sugar dressed in pink
Rots your teeth away

On a cold and foreign bed,
Yours is all that's in my head.
I miss the swarm of pins,
That tackle my shins and forearms,
And pulse into my every extremity,
Like a remedy
For the kind of sick that plagues the mind
Of twisted children, left behind
By those with purpose and direction.
Freedom is the new infection.

" I don't ever want you to feel trapped"
The first time I watched you cry.
Vulnerability is so very beautiful on you.
It wouldn't be fair if you were invincible.
And anyway, it's nice to be let inside.
To be given chance to pass judgement
On those shattered pieces of your psyche
With which you've cut yourself.
I'd like someday to collect them all
And dull the edges,
So that you may handle them,
And never have to worry about drawing blood.