crooked-clockwork

(birth.) i walk home, crisp shoelaces, bloodied nose middle of autumn, frothing at the mouth kids took summer skin too far, brought on apocalypse i tell myself it will be over soon, wintertime freckles will be here incensed (childhood.) stove milk and delicate murmurs the technicolor alphabet teaches itself purple bowls with animal faces hospital bracelets around tiny wrists won’t come loose mama (adolescence.) the clouds are gasoline, wisps of gin, addicted there is vomit on the floor, new candy sores sky is burning, orange with hungry flame, vying i don’t know who to talk to, crying let me go alive (adulthood.) doctor

there are no pitfalls in the renown of hurt, for it is always there in the mold of something neglected, something bloodshot; unraveling it from the prayer of a public leukemia.

a king of disintegrating glitch, of possession-conquest, the unquiet phenomenon to the silver-fleshed, it preaches against a stormy flux of her guilt, asteroid-ridden throne.

A statement to Cerberus, the roughhewn; her blood is hypoxic, blooming florid, that name too profound to be hummed so soon frets the desert-beat heart, throbbing torrid. Deep-sea glass will tell this sobering tale through sundry a dawn of dusks and daybreaks, in lifelong ties to a slow coffin nail she dyes droplets of Sauvignon headaches. Fixed in the Kuiper Belt, lobbed asunder to the core of a ghost; plutonian, her mother counsels the springtide thunder in a burnt garden, his bid chthonian: “Our grim daydreams, no longer monochrome – mother, child, to dew from dead winter; home.”

no one is born in prison, some in waiting, some in holding, but no one is born in prison. waiting can last for a few days, to arrest us for crying too loud, for a flustered first breath. holding can bring tears and scarred forearms, but only last a few seconds. the whole world smiles at you, but holds your hands behind your back. from licorice ties to metal knots, fresh fruit to torn underwear; men and women grin, but know they hold your heart in contaminated fingers. burrowing their nails deep, forcing almond-tasting idiocy farther into tender muscle upon loving caress, we are incessantly in prison – we just aren’t born ther

his body in a bed of fleece, emaciated, mind dreaming deep of his muse deceased; this man of twenty-three, hero of none, a liar and a thief, how dare he speak of love when all he knows is to eat. cannibal, not yet, yet tired of the term, “they parody him,” they say, “they pervert him,”; all disagree, though he has learned to tame his woes in some form or fashion, screaming into sheet music, dreaming deep of a muse deceased. meat and muscle lacks taste, much like the scenery after the night of the suppression – left crying please do not go please oh god do not leave me when all he knows is to eat, they say; wh

wedlock-born child of envy, red-eyed misfortune, a cake to bake; he sees the cherry blossoms and thinks of death rather than life, plucked too early; heart too broad, heart too simple. the limbs of trees his own, nature a nuisance but so close; he creates a world similar to our own but slightly more misunderstood. his name for misanthropy, red-eyed mischief and monopoly; to steal his music and leave him faithless: it fills his lungs with fire; fills his body with cancer, for with it, he will be all right. drink the cold medicine down like winter berries, for cherries don’t bloom like that; no, cherries don’t bloom like that:

chestnut hair, ocean eyes trapped in the glass of tragic romance, like blue russian spies and the red bloodied soldiers; that’s how she spoke, so choked up by tears and gunsmoke, reverberation in a stadium, so red, white, and blanche; to run by the beach, high and living to be young and die, to be spry and breathe on borrowed lungs: to inhale burn and exhale melancholia. it’s humbly the american dream, to be loved by a man with a golden soul so clean; to wear your lips dripping with emotion and drink down love to mine her coal-black spoils and pop-art crown. she hugged her body close, her caged heart a weapon she had to protect,

the sky was dark, a violent repercussion i should’ve recognized; the ultraviolet rays from the spying sun, it seared my skin like the poisonous moonlight breaking the windows – death came like a wave, each day a new set of tears to shed, a new vase of pretty flowers to pick. the water tasted bitter, but the lovely faces in the caskets made it bearable. at noontime, sipping tea and eating his tousled hair, he dared to say he loved me. before our death, after the burial, i laughed, holding my un-beating heart far away from his fingers, and once again, “i love you.” words more of a statement rather than a confession;