Bitten by a spider
at the oddest hour.

His whole body throbbing
with his own pulse.

All his insides are charred
but sleep is not a willing
companion.
The eternal coronation,
death as his champion.

Sweating through a thin veil
of details, begging the question,
begging for recognition,
even the most elegant logic is an ugly thing.

In delirium, he tears his journal apart-
that's how an artist starts.
He is ugly,
he is crude,
he drank some poison
down in Greenwood.

he becomes quite faint
when struck with the
quaint notion:

that even the heavy
handed blacksmith
has finesse, and feeling too.

Did you really print a bar code on the cover of it?
If that's what you'll do to put a dollar in your pocket
you can have it.
Maybe if you weren't so ugly you could have sold your body as well.
And your soul.

Remember how you lost it
when you found that poetry in my closet?

I'd put a cool kiss on your ankle,
touch your feet.
You used to cheat on me.

All so long ago,
crushed with common sense,
and again, it's irrelevant.

Misery,
dig deep,
make me happy,
squeeze a smile out of me.

Comin' up on that second wind, babe,
lotta things I'd like to say.
Worthy of conversation,
I know, those reasons
have something to do
with why my face twitches
and why
the light switches of my mind

flicker.

My ****** bandages
cover the wound,
my imaginary band
is playing top of the roof.

Take
my
number,
take
my
victim
card,
victim
scarred,

singing
is
hard.

Standing center,
rage of frost
flooding
through arteries
to fingertips,
icicles dangling
from my ankles,
bass guy from the unnamed
session band cleared his throat,
looked over to the guitar man,
he was looking down.
I was dying with a flower in my hand,
making monuments out of the audience.

To the left of me was an angel
smiling,
drawing ***** on dollar bills,
stuffing them into the pants
of whoever passed by;
some feinted modesty
but most implored,
writhing,
******* themselves
crying "more, more more!"
To the right of me a
cricket heehawed-
involuntary- 
and played a clown;
there were two psychologists,
one ripped off his clothes,
took fighting stance,
beating his chest and howling,
eyes glowing toxic green as his
colleague got on hands
and knees,
held a stethoscope
to the puddle of *****
accumulating beneath him,
brow creased,
listening intently.

And yes, I finished your manuscript,
under duress I guess.
I felt like I'd perfect the phrases
in the only ways that I knew how.

By clenching curses into my teeth,
allowing the howling soul
to disengage and repeat itself,
completing that boundless,
ever restless, and eternal process.

My ****** bandages cover the wounds,
my imaginary band is much

cooler than you.

It's nothing.

It's nothing
that you'd be into.

When I was sixteen
I would trade
my allowance
for some feelings
every Friday night.
I'd pull on the strings
and pull on my hair
until I was discordant
and bald and
still in the dark.

I tried hard to see
what they wanted me to see
in country, when it came to metal
I just couldn't feel the steel and
hip hop failed to have
the same effect on me.
When I was a sick teen,
see, that's when I found indie.




What did you think you'd find in the avant-garde?
beautiful, new, perplexing, plexi-glass box
where rock stars go to suffocate
and die
(keep kitsch alive).
Really,
what did you think you'd find in the junk-yard?

Glad I missed the rhythm of those loops.

I know
that I know
what I know.

But I also know
there is a lot
that I don't know,

she says to me,
confidently.