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Dec 2018
That other part of me is hemorrhaging again

You can see it if I pull up my shirt

It’s just below the scar on my stomach

Don't you see it?

That’s ok; no one does the first time

You have to get used to the idea that something

Something lives inside your body

Other than yourself.

It’s like letting the pus of an infection

Or the twisting the water out of a damp towel

Counting the minutes, are we?

Those cracks in the medicine cabinet are getting bigger

By the day

The walls are hollowing out

As much as you to picture me,

You’re going to be distracted by the woman walking the other way

Crossing your path wearing black stockings,

a low trim skirt

And a pale face that bears no eyes.

I’m past the elevators, in apt# 276—

Ignore the violently shuddering man in 274

Like an idling phantom, turning to catch you

Our synthetic blood laced with FDA-approved preservatives

The bass boosted from trunks of Cadillac coup-devilles

Synths layers—then delayed, and phased through mixer boards

Faces given masks to paint and supply over masses with

Industrial strength dream pop for Death metal Floridians

Mesa Boogie rectifier amps thrashing and impregnating ears

Scotch eggs soft boiled and left in saucers of cream and Irish whiskey

Children walking single file face towards modern Auschwitz.

Snail trails over rotten apple cores

Left by riot girl Eves

And warned by Adam O’ Conservatism

Ahead of corporate delusions of grandeur

The people raise banners to spoon-fed malcontent fools,

Hiding the holes in their teeth,

Using metal clamps for their jaws and joints

Hosing down any person not white in appearance

And pigmentation, putting the carcasses in  

Meat grinders and rubber soles

The devil in the frying pan, ready to harden arteries like teenage *****.

An incoherent mess of self-indulgent metaphors

Spewing from rushing fingers tips on clashing keyboards

And aching, sore, tense back muscles,

And weakened nimble fingers

From a late 20s savant or loser

Unfulfilled, unquenched, unsatisfied, but—

The time will come when we shine and when we reap what we sew

And live lives that we always wanted for ourselves

But the longer we wait the older we get,

and the days don’t last as long

The weeks fly by

And the eternal year of our youth is

but the quick and fleeting year of our age

At one point does the ambition and aspiration,

fade like our energy in our bodies?

We learn to live with disappointment

and join the herd of others like us

And praise the idols of the limelight

The industrial age for the modern American economy,

For when the night has a thousand eyes

And we’re a thousand kisses deep

And we shed tears only angels can envy

We’ll know what sorrow is

captured on film and described in books

Where literature can emphasize—

illustrate with text what paintings couldn’t

It’s a stupid septuagenarian fantasy that fades

With the vagrant woodsman covered in ash and coal

Roswell interstellar lights escaping over the 1950s desert

And the roads smelling of sulphur and shrimp

Crystallized cathedral spires

I’ll get naked for a dive bar lunch of psychosexual deviants

And Warhol-esque color coding mixed drinks under neon flickering

and horse fly buzzing

And clubs to dance till the apocalypse can edge our lust

Seek fulfillment in the retro ultra-nuclear fusion reactor made up by

Technobabble neuromancers sitting in platinum rooms waiting
for the show to be picked up for a revival on cable 25 years later.
We’ll run the blade against the grain and find that soft spot

For the blackened metal to merge with flesh

and can call itself bone when we know it’s all just really

Artificial.
Trevor Gates
Written by
Trevor Gates  26/M
(26/M)   
277
 
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