Bubbling liquid in my veins
boiled to temperature my temples can no longer bear,
so the skin splits and flesh lays bare.
It destroys itself, what a clever defense mechanism.
What a putrid smell.
The world around me is smear-splattered in paint,
orange and incision crimson, the two blended so coarsely
that I groan and moan as I writhe on the floor,
cackling echoes down dead metal hallways,
smoothly polished so as not to rip hair off the scalp
of a man who decided, no, it's of necessity,
to press his skull onto the beam to cool himself,
to press his forehead so hard, in,
that his eyeballs begin to bloodshot
and ooze bulge tears out of the sockets,
forcing his desperate, drastic inhale to catch a grain
of stray sand that his teeth grind down on,
back and forth, hard, producing more pain,
imagined into reality as fire and red-hot coal
burn in his mind,
sparked by thought of the life force that flows
through him, and how it kills him to
never escape it. Dependent on something.
Let it die.

I feel for him, that man surrounded
by inescapable, bloodthirsty anger.
He festers. A blanket cradling
a damp patch of moss
left soaking in the corner of the garage,
left to be cleaned another day.
On that day a world is washed away,
and even he burns infernos.