white walls,
the cackling night,
festering liquor,
and a chance to break from my landlocked liturgy
collapse on the fine-toothed grass.

my head -- a dark carnival of shared substances --
smolders at the grind of its gears,
as my Black Venom mistress dribbles
drunkspeak for an hour, and aimless
boys find holographic truth
in a hallucinagenic bathroom --
"we should mean less than this."

close the door to bedroom crypt--
"you've got to die to be born again"--
Black Venom undresses me
while the shutters of perception
rattle open, then closed, open, closed, open--
a grey wind and erratic desire fire, fall, pant,
realign to destroy body in the name
of a newness to follow--
if I'm mad,
I'm quite good at it--
if I'm sane,
I have no intention of staying that way.