#asterfires

lethargy gently descends over you

as your eyelids open

before you is a lazy dream

half-constructed and haphazard

but a sanctuary nevertheless

it's all-encompassing

and the air has the gravity of book-store dust

delicate but heavyweight

no one is here to startle you awake

yet you feel the warm presence of someone known

if you were to awake properly maybe you could stretch your arms

back to the walls of your mind

even though your illusory glance makes it seem as if it would only touch cold painted walls

from the left a golden sun waterstrokes across your vision

and it gently stains your skin with heat as it streaks past

it is but a dream of your root

yours

nothing but a dream

★

Electric Chair

The electric chair I am sat on

is made of porcelain

The very same that fashions

my grandma's plates.

Her house was lost to a vendor

who could keep the lights on,

My torture is lost to an action

that can snuff me out

The adrenaline took a roundtrip

through my veins

And now it's bleeding out

Maybe like blood, maybe like urine

Dripping into the toilet below me

My head is jolting

With an electricity I dread

And I am plugged in to stare

directly at the wall

One sniff of that smell

that sick, sickening smell

that sick, suffocating smell

and down I fall

My knees buckling to the tiles

Also porcelain

Also stained

As I prostrate to God

Underneath the shadow of a toilet bowl

"Lord I humble myself before you"

I say.

For there is nothing so humbling as this.

I am static with the numbness

I am short-circuiting with dumbness

I am a mess and redundant

I am a used up bulb, despondent

I, who used to be filled with innocence,

churned my innocence into regret

I overturned my truths until they burned

into lies

I did all that, all these actions were mine

Monitor lit but still self-same

I implore you:

Erase me and my shame

My memories and my name

For, I cannot recall well either -

But I have a certain distrust of both,

And of you and the ether

That lies beyond the window,

Beyond my reach.

I clasp air instead of inner peace.

And you laugh with the door closed.

Father, brother, son or lover

Make Faustian bargains at the debt of my youth

They coat their hands in period blood

Before wrapping around my teddy's throat

I know not when the reckoning begins

I eat the grit of other men's sins

Dance pretty marionette poppet and puppet

Strings threaded through intestines and eyebrows

Pins through uterus and hair

I rip them out as I prepare

In the mirror I see Jephthah's daughter

Her father's sacrifice

She drank the music of the hills

And feasted at a banquet of tears among friends

Before she died- a young virgin maid

I bite down her righteous complacency

I will not kneel in shame

You, who has brought on my fury