I want to die out here with you
I want to decompose in your arms
our flesh slowly growing softer, and softer as our skin rots and our organs decay
our bones slowly growing closer, and closer
until our leg bones are not separated by leg flesh and our hip bones are not separated by hip flesh and our hearts seep together over our rib cages and our skulls press together, chin to forehead
dry leaves tickle our feet and the cool wind soothes our hot bones and the earth covers our clasped hands
until they can no longer tell who was me and who was you

Why does everything decay and fade?
Time touches everything,
A great destructive force
We exist to wither and watch everything fall
Bringing close to our hearts that which will die
We try so hard to create as much life as is lost
But once it is lost, it will not again be found
So we cry and ache and scream out
With a hope that maybe something will hear
And tell us why it is that we must live
Just to watch the world decay

So this is what pain feels like:
A rotting in the center of your tooth.
You don’t want to touch it (that’s where the real pain starts),
So you leave it.
And a dull ache becomes a sharp one;
Decay on the inside becomes decay on the outside.

And then your tooth is black.

It hurts more than you’ve ever felt
When the dentist takes his drill to your tooth.
It somehow hurts even worse
When he tells you that he can’t salvage it.
        You can’t turn decay into strength, he says.
        You can’t bring death back to life, he says.

Now, there’s an empty space where a tooth once was.
You run your tongue over it, mindlessly, daily—
In a few weeks, the raw flesh becomes toughened, smooth—
It’s like nothing was ever there.
No tooth. No decay. No death.
But you still remember.

You still feel the ache.

I sit alone on the floor,
the light blinks in and out.
...or perhaps it is my eyes?
that I cast now over leftwards
to look at the doorway.
Empty, as it always is,
or is now? as it should be.

I feel as though I am floating,
no, I am grounded now.
Chained here to the floor.
My body lays like bones in the ground,
unmoving and crushed by dirt.
heavy and cloying, the smell of earth.
worms dig under my skin,
wriggling parasites in my skull.

Am I decaying? like I once wished.
my thoughts like rot, what else...
but to deteriorate into darkness.
My body lays on the floor,
a useless cadaver as it always was.
I am strung to it by some means,
my ghost lingering on the dead.
Have I not moved on yet?

The Gargoyle on the roof.
How far you've come,
Without moving an inch.
Always there;
Often unseen.
Standing steadfast,
but time and the elements
Will always chip away.

The Gargoyle on the roof:
Sometimes small,
Sometimes large.
It will make itself known one day
When it finally flies but
Is found to be frozen in stone.
Tumbling, tumbling down
To hit the ground
And shatter
Or will it be saved
From it's terminal fall
By my unsuspecting brain?
Will I be the one
Who shatters?

thinking about how cops are beating protestors senseless not even 20 minutes from where i live.
thinking about how they block off the streets and stand unmasked, batons in hand, other hand resting pointedly on their gun.
thinking about how it could be me next— another unspecified black face and black body and black existence snuffed out— a hashtag, a mural.
          (and those are the lucky ones.)
thinking about how a memorial is the best case scenario for a black life.
thinking about the bodies in the street.
thinking about blood splattering the ground, mixing with paint and obscuring the “black lives matter” lettering on the road.
thinking about the chalk art and loud music in a neighborhood soon-to-be-gentrified.
thinking about how we’ve grown used to the stench of rotting flesh outside our doors.
thinking about the taste of blood in my mouth from my nearly-severed tongue i didn’t realize i was biting.
thinking about the tension in my neck and jaw.
thinking about the way my eyes never seem to close.
thinking about the eyes that will never again open.
thinking thinking thinking.

Rotting means having your brain
collapse in on itself in a grey gooey heap.
It means your eyes
falling apart and your tongue swelling up
and bursting
under the weight of a thousand maggots.
It's cutting your stomach into ribbons
and letting it shrivel into nothing.
It's letting your bones wither and crack
and your hair fall out
and it means curling up into a
dry
dusty
gooey
broken
slimy
oozing
ball.
I think I'm rotting.
Please help me.
Please help me,
I'm rotting.

The point of view
Is that it is pointed at you
of which your perspective is askewed
They will point to their point of view
demand that you start anew
Muddy the waters till it looks like a stew
murky and obtuse
gory and smelling of refuse
Lacking scenery the perfect image of destitute.
No refuge just excuse
one right after another
Soon all the words come together
Musty dusty and covered in leather
it all changes right before your eyes
now it looks right because your thruth started to die
now your whole life is just a big ole lie
That is the whole point of this
Your point of view
Is pointed at you
Now they are all the same
Your point of view is a point of view
It just isn't the same