chugging bile and liquor closed eyes smell the innards of a joint wrapped in oilslicked stain shoveling sugar thrice processed into vocal chords left silenced but for the coughing up of shriveled lungs set ablaze to ease the twitching triggered by the mistress doused in white who scaffolds into crumbling nasal caverns to numb the brain that dreams of god in guilty refrain and whips thorny obedience to words siphoned through ghosts of men and obedience to the inflated heads of state and corporate banks who play Skinnard's game and always win millions of yes-men nodding their heads in addiction to artificial green leaves printed with blood and even lovers twirling passion in their beds have their eyes squeezed shut clutching at darkness slick and disappearing at the touch of pulsing fingertips racing to bury themselves in skin and forget the achey organs that lay waiting within weary and smothered from covering up thoughts too sharp to breathe in...

--it's all hide and seek.
running and running and running
from bare and open
vulnerability
shrouded underneath
layers
of reflected identities
and neuro-chemistry
and material fortresses
and snarled teeth
and synthetic bliss
wrapped in bitter bumblebees.

don't you think it's time you swallowed
the wince it takes
to glimpse your fear's shadows?