Stained glass snakes turn thoughts into ghouls
while sanity blows the barrel to ****** ******.
Glistening molt forms a lead-lined home
through fissures where brain and bone used to be.
Slithering kaleidoscopes mar face and eyes
but anguish seems friendly in multicolor.

Becoming mad doesn't mean I now have nothing to say.

At my first attempt to speak it strikes. I taste copper and the sting of candied fangs injecting crystallized honey, I can only bite back. It shatters behind its shining eyes and long body falls away while I chew the head, paying no mind to gashes in cheeks and blood filling stomach. I feel my tongue begin to melt and drip down my throat, mixing with blood glass and bile. Death appears to me, stepping out of a pink clown car winding up to throw an unlit birthday cake, I'm not ready, I have so much more to try to say.

I remember I have hands. I remember.

I push my fingertips in below the ribs and open my stomach to shovel the contents out onto the ground. As I do the soil turns black and grass grows into twisted thorn bushes around my body and into my wounds posing me as a grotesque homage to the sadistic. Death sets aside the cake to watch with a smirk but it isn't long before Elvis tapes a "kick me" sign to his back and finally drops dead and sinks into the ground and I feel the thorns grow thicker and longer piercing into and out of my flesh burning and spewing red smoke replacing the air making breath heavy and unforgiving I reach through and pull out my lungs to spare myself but Death is distracted he won't let me leave God missing Teresa in chains Stalin playing Pat-a-Cake with Shirley Temple on fields of infant bones and burnt bacon I try to twist my eyes out next but the snakes hold them fast so I watch

through horrific shades the earth fold in on itself.



*Yes, I remember.