i drip my arms over your tired shoulders.
my hands cascade down your paper-thin back.

you're always crying.

and you're terrible wings tremble, but my dew-soaked fingers are
nimble
and unkind.

this is why no one can love me.

my heart is ill and beating with the strength of a
dying light.

pulsing off and on and off and on.

i carry scissors.

while i hug my poor self,
i clip my wings with the ease of a
psychopath.

there is an end somewhere
but not here.

i have learned to breathe under holy water -
grew gills so strong they are
lined with celestial gold.

the ocean is a puddle to me now.

and i ***** pearls of pain,
lick them clean with my acetylene
tongue.

my acids will heal what the world cannot.

pills and love potions  
can't take away
my virginity.

i am clean, so clean.

the devil watches me and
cringes at my radioactive light.

for i am dead and alive all at once.
poison, poison.

the radium drips from my lips like
babyspit and i am too pure
for god himself

so i offer my golden blood
to a higher power

that would take the pureness of it all
and make it an ounce
of what i could have been

-- when I have the tenderness of a writhing dragon,
he will paint flowers across my throat

as though to remind me that fires are indelicate,
and that I writhe in a prison made of open space.
-- this man will not smother me with his skin
when we sleep.
-- this man will unhinge the door of my mouth,
and kiss out the bullets stuck under my tongue.
                                                                ­               ---
whatever thousandth day I awaken beside this man,
realizing I have become the flowers he painted
across my throat, by braving my throat,

I will, unchaining myself from the draconic worry,
bring him his coffee in bed, with a smile.

i have no idea how to feel free
my skin is a cage and my mind is a
whip around my throat

the pain is numbing, but i tell myself to love it anyway

everything is boring
and nothing is the same,

but this awful feeling of
a dead man living in my brain

if tomorrow never came
would you still wait for the sun to rise

the moon
took shelter in my chest and
made a home
of my husk of a body

but it's too
big and bleeding
to hold tight