Flay me, shroud my body
in Saran wrap, for others to see
what you mean to me: a relief
map of live suffering,
writhing organs in a plastic bag,
a human soup to drag
behind you, sensitive to everything you do,
overflowing with formless worship,
pink, raw and dreaming
of a vicious kinship:
Open yourself and slip my parts in,
we can exist, two hideous beasts
within a single beautiful skin.

I am huddled in the coroner,
a little beast within a man,
And when at night he studies bodies,
I come out,
now and again.

even as a kid, I knew that
forever didn’t exist.
I pulled tulips from the earth
and brought them home with me,
but I wasn’t looking at the petals.
I was looking at the tiny hole
left behind in the soil
after the roots were ripped out.

it wasn’t about the
beautiful thing I had taken;
it was about taking something
from the planet that had
taken everything from me.

the tulips went into a vase and
I kept them, like any other kid.
but I wasn’t the kid
who marched in and proudly
showed them to their parents.
I didn’t show them to anyone.
I sat by the vase and
watched them rot.

they were my physical proof
that death is real,
evidence that my friend’s dog
did not run away to a butterfly farm,
and the old man down the road
did not mysteriously go to a better place.
they died, and they rotted.

I think about this often now.
I killed flowers not to admire them,
but to prove to myself that
even beautiful things can die.

I know how morbid that sounds,
but what you have to understand
is that my whole life had
revolved around death.

my childhood memories
were a sickening collection
of wilted flowers, of worms
burned into the concrete
after a storm, of rotting fruit
and swarms of flies.

my young mind showed me
the same images on repeat.
dead friends, dead relatives,
people who left me,
people who left this earth.

for my entire childhood,
I never got to stop seeing
lives that weren’t fully lived.

even as a kid, death didn’t faze me.
violence was nothing to me.
pain wasn’t fun, but it was tolerable.
even back then, I was numb.

I remember how being
so numb at such a young age
terrified my teachers and
scared my friends’ parents.

I didn’t know how
to explain that I was numb
because no matter what
horrors I was shown,
I had already seen worse.

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?

[this is just an intro course: a 101 on death and dismemberment.]

we were looking to get high.
delilah and i.
higher than high.
& she knew a guy who knew a guy
who got tapped by the bonesmen a semester or two back,
or so she says.
he had all the goodies; coke, nangs, and dust.
& a small yacht, for a moonlit ****.

             chew this ripe ‘lil nub of apricot plucked,
             it’s a gland in fact,
             best consumed fresh,
             just before death.

high tide, wide eyed, sped on adrenochrome.
we ****** all night, felt god, ****** god,
were god.
thanks,       god.

he said this batch was called “sisters of mercy.”
named for the nuns who farmed it
from orphan kids’ kidneys.

         there are two truths.
         two chakras to pulp.
         one for the masses – schizos & scope –
         the other for the monarchs – the princess & pope –

pineal or adrenal.
house of the moon.
                       or
                    vintage, house of blood.

hit the white rabbit.
the mythic psychedelic.
clot. frazzledrip. drencrom.
chromata bomb, have it pure
or synthetic.
pick your path and pray, business or pleasure.

              you know too much,

she said.
& i was dead before the end of the semester.

the genteel men about town prefer to cup the blood.
at least a tarp to preserve the rug.
                           “treasure your blessings, for this is the life. “
                                                               they incinerate the leftover flesh,
                                                                ­               save for a bone or ear,
                                                scattered in the woods at the edge of town
                        for a saturday morning mystery kind of kid to have found.

first son proselytized    – half-past jesus –
second son convoluted      – by the dark lord jeebus –
tricks &/or treats.
sacraments of cancer.
to cultivate within him that harsh old matter.

town & teachers & nurses & nuns.
all watching.
all whispering.
all ******* beneath the desk along your thigh.
take a walk to the library.
fifth floor,
section c,
aisle 3,
somewhere between rites & rituals.
blood opens the gate.
adrenaline opens the dream.

                        hit the white rabbit.

        he abducted a drifter/
        or saint, by the throat
        like an eggplant brought him to the threshold.
        idled there,
        for the conduit to unlock.
        cut/
        the horror from his        .
        pulled him apart at the ribcage and sac
        just to recover one sacred gland.

he was a luciferian wasp.
or a vampyr in seersucker shorts.
just a man with a taste for blood.
took a bullet to the brain either way,
a man with a hole in his head.

can i simply go on vacation from all this existential dread?
just slip away for a day or two?

Foul, hideous, and horrid
Unfit for natural light.
An image, none as grisly
As the man named Simon White.

Once his heart was broken
So he kept the pieces in a box.
Tethered safely to his hip
With tight chains and key-less locks.

His mind was wont to wander
To clouds too high and skies too far.
So to keep himself grounded down to earth,
He kept his brain inside a jar.

His teeth would never smile.
Traded some and sold the others
Each to an unfamiliar home
Now all without their brothers.

Oh, his tongue was such a bore!
So he minced it to a paste.
He boiled, baked, and seasoned it
Yet still it had no taste.

He grew tired of his eyes
Looking down and looking back
So he took a brush with inked tip
And painted them pitch black.

The shrieks and wails of the passerby
He could not stand to hear.
So he melted a *** of candles
And stuffed the wax in each ear.

His face had done no wrong
But with fear it one day might,
He took a knife and chopped its nose!
Less from prudence and more from spite.

Don’t throw me in the meat locker
It’s dark and cold in there
Don’t cover me up in plastic
For I will have no air

Don’t cut me into pieces
For I’m not yours to sell
Don’t send me in and shut the door
It’s dark and cold as hell