my throat is fit for drinking,
bruised and bandaged,
and taped around.
drinking straw with fluid
bubbling over like an unwatched pot.
but this one doesn’t need
watching over.
it just gets depressing.
like watching an old cat die.
an old friend you forgot
had whimpered in closets
and under beds with dust bunnies
burrowed underneath.
picturesque, a pregraduate
corpse, stiffened on an olive cot
awaits withdrawal
of poison or of life.
the trachea reacts defensively;
saliva, yellow and brown fluids
bubble out while the throat hardens
until it can contract no longer.
hands grasp for the last
gasp. sweat-soaked hands tighten
on cotton sheets.
the ordeal is over.
perspiration reeks.
death oppresses the air.

wound nickel is drowned
in the clangor of chords
struck by silence’s worthy adversary.
machines are forced into movement
by the hooks in major, minor,
and flat, catching their gears.
forcing the to swing, to shake,
to dance! revolution,
this is revolution for the docile,
complacent masses.
shake them up, turn their heads
with a fever of cracking
voice and seizured strings.
never let it stop.
for the moment the note breaks,
apathy strikes them
uninspired.

his skin is paragraphed, the box
is checked. toes are tagged
and severed in reports.
missing person, discovered
head, and readers face contorts.
so gruesome, the unknown, macabre,
and eerie. because we equate
death as alien. we reject it
in all of it’s forms.
it is the one thing to which
the living will never concede.
lest they be dead! and no longer
living, therefore strangers
to the knowing, unknowingly
unwitting to the inexperience.
death is a phase of life
or vice versa.
but it is not so gruesome,
nor macabre to express it
with a little bit of mystery,
wit, originality, calculation.
i would prefer my skin abstract
in prose, save my toes
and bite the nails to spare
your chattering teeth.

cold mornings on hot days
you awake at
ten after, half past seven,
late coming in. still tired
with salty eyes.
you feel like it’s a dream,
a euphoria suffocating you
with chemicals. it’s good
to be home
even if you’re still trying
to convince yourself of that.
the same assholes with different
faces spew shit every time
they talk, and that’s all it is.
talk. shut up.
you’re all getting tossed around
in the wind,
there’s so much of it here.
it’s the same thing, the stale
gust of familiarity.
put up a sail, and maybe
you’ll actually go somewhere.

these walls are skeletons,
and this district a graveyard
for the termites to feast
on foundations like maggots feed
on flesh so pale. so blue,
i find myself ascending the steps,
light-headed to the attic.
old homes are like old corpses,
fascinating and timeless,
legendary, but relics fit only
for demise. sure, renovation,
but only a genius can do that
to a corpse. even god can’t reconstruct
the temple, the pile of flesh
torn by earth’s bottom feeders.
i can only kill to the end of time
to prove the futility of this
task. homes will rot, and this
is where exemplification starts;
havens for arsonists,
rapists, and lurkers. places
where strange men watch, wait
for your children to pass,
and follow them home.
but i am an artist,
and i will kill you all.