On the deck I lie, beaten and battered
I've put my heart on the line, but did it really matter?
My flesh has been flayed and bound by steel,
I'm condemned to myself and the things that I feel

Another nail, beaten too
Tearing through my carapace and securing all that is loose,
The bolts, the nuts, the bones and the screws,
I lie ripped apart and exposing all of me to all of you

What's vulnerability really if not an autopsy of the soul?
Never are we so bare and exposed, these insecurities taking their tolls,
Another bang and another thump, another nail is driven through,
The bearer of the hammer, it had to have been you

The flesh is seared and as taut as could be,
did I do this to myself or have you done this to me?
I watch as you line up another nail, but I can't stop you,
The truth is I love to be this bare, would you let me break you down too?

My heart stays on the line, and for you, you can have it in whole,
My wit, my body, my mind, and my soul.
Vulnerability passes with haste
While regret lingers, ever bitter the taste

Paint in acid
scream into static
through perceptions pallid
with desires archaic and elastic.
It doesn’t really matter
who lies at the other end of the ampersand
smoke and mirror shatter
grinding from glass into sand
yet here we stand
malleable and plastic
underhand
and egocentric
hallowed by introspection.
Our shadows long lost in the tide
with the whispers of deviation
I guess, I shouldn’t have lied
but you were my only means of abstraction.
Now,
we’re just timelessly out of fashion
now,
we’re recoiling from the passion
that was once instilled
visceral
riled
so sweetly sacramental.