Tallies on the wall.  
Doors that rearrange,  
In strange, entropic ways.
That dissemble and confuse  
To keep two locked in the halls;
The lights flicker, periodically-
They spot shadows on their peripheral-
Likewise in intervals.
They seem to speak,
But only mockingly.
They did not choose this fate;
The house chose them.
Some must be condemned-
Like Minos and the Minotaur-
For a terrible hunger to abate.
Another tally in the frame.
They’ve been this way earlier,
Though their recollection’s getting murkier,
While hands reach from plaster,
Reaching to claim.
They must learn to love the maze
The freedom in being confined;
At least their goal is defined-
After all, once you enter, you may never leave,
And are doomed to tread the lengthways.

Outside cars pass and children play pretend
By a for sale home overgrown,
Inconspicuous, yet locally it is well-known:
You never get too close
To the house that never ends.

Will you love me still
when my flesh has fallen to rot?
Will you love me
when decay has taken my form,
and fed my flesh
to a grave full of worms?
Or should I slow the
gangrenous bubbling of my skin?
Will you love the ivory perfection
of my bones, sweet one,
so like the grasping branches
of a dead tree...?
Will you still lie by my side,
our flesh rotting together,
the roots of a tree twining through
our ribcages?
Will you still love me,
love me dead?

Huddled grazing at the feet of drunken Gods,
imbibed by crimson blasphemes and the lust of lies.
Smeared unto the grasses- a darkened hue.
onward weighs the pleasantry that binds.

The tight flog of a screamless whip.
Chaotic lore into peasant skin it rends.
A stench rising from cadavers - a carrion feast.
As a Ravens coups spur the ilk of ill portents.

Ominous lures of the slivered silver moon-
echo flashes upon sable black feathers.
Speaking in glints against rising wings agape,
the unraveled conscience of a God unfettered.

To the slaughter willfully go the droves
of cancered thought and blinded eye.
From whose spoil will feed the starv'ed flock
whose flagellation still yield no cries.

A Gods stature at which fullest they stand
is only dwarfed by the encroaching universe, avast-
whose very stars are the moon bound Ravens sprawl
pocking the scape against which the ****** dispatched.

Cyclical onslaught of the sacrifices come-
Inescapable fate beats the drum.

And so eclipse the ravens - o’er the moon!
their ****** return to the banquet strewn.

dark’s peering into day,
wonder when the dew’ll lay;
time’s slowed as skies turn static,
least the hours are less erratic.
orange lamps glow
outside a misted window;
earthy rain’s falling hard
but fire’s lit and sky is starred.
sometimes mist deceives the eyes:
seen silent figures’ quick demise.
ocean spits over the pier,
almost as grey as the Wear;
lighthouse shines it’s steely beam,
illuminating the horizon’s seam.
heaven’s sealed with wrought dull iron,
far away seems unearthly Zion;
harvest moon’s not as vague:
illuminating an eight-legged plague.
crows spectate above and below,
you’d be surprised what they know;
change leers at every bend,
nostalgia seems an only friend.
the veil is thinner than before,
perhaps open is another door;
harvest season’s coming to an end,
fields of Elysium this way wend.

"write a poem,"

Sylvia Plath commanded summer before last.
Her voice in all places I looked.
Avoided and silenced letters
Crawled in front of my mind and knocked on my skull:
A polite entry into their society with a family,
Other words in Gregorian chant:
You cannot undo insanity in the third decade.

I tell the others, the eyes around me, that these words
Feel like birth announced just now,
With no time to prepare or plan, to nest and caress
The down feathery face, or kiss his tiny mouth.

A poem emerges with a scream,
Bony hands encircling my throat and pushing
Into formation. The existence of new words--
Always the ones in the language before,
Though in this birth the roots twist under the tree.

Where does it end?
Where does it begin?
Is there a start at all?
Or has it just always been?

The cycle starts again.

Feels like I’ve been in this place before,
On the ground crawling on all fours.
Another lap around this body,
Swallowing the serpents tail.
It hisses just behind me,
Covering every track I make,
When my eyes turn to see the trail,
It’ll be consumed by the snake.

My own ouroboros.

Muscles expand and contract,
Pulling me further in.
I feel myself dissolving,
The future is the past again.

**** the lights,
Take my eyes,
I don’t want to see,
The repeat of me.

My own ouroboros.

Zombie girl,

Do you weep,
For those you ****?
Do you feel cold,
Without your second soul?

Zombie girl,

Skeleton’s always smile.
Your skin’s getting colder,
Like a winter in your summer.

Zombie girl,

You’re an open casket,
Something warm died inside it.

Zombie girl,

Hang it up in your closet.
Don’t forget to close it.


Skeleton,
In the house of the living.
It’s like being alive,
But never being able to die.

Dissection,
On the surgeon’s table.
Gave its soul to death,
And she said her first goodbye.

She opened up,
The bee and the flower bud.
Carnivore,
She slammed her petals shut.

Why does it matter to you?
It belongs to me.
I stole its air,
That makes it free.

Hung it from an umbilical cord,
Tied under a broken crescent moon.
A stranger wore your skin,
Now they’re buried inside a human coffin.

She sung along to carols of the needle man.
Stillborn chorus of the cold dead thing in her hand.

She felt it die.
I heard the crocodile cry.
When she gave her first goodbye.

𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒃𝒓𝒂𝒆 

         𝒈𝒐𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒄 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒑𝒆𝒓𝒔 
   𝒎𝒊𝒅𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔 
        𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒉𝒆 𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒔 

𝒃𝒍𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒃𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒎𝒔