Teethe and Flower

What if I am killing myself

just to become something new?

What do I bring with me?

Will I miss what I leave behind?

Do I continue to punish myself,

or is there gold in the hills beyond?

Will my epitaph always read:

"Where you see X's in my eyes I see stars,

and a smoking hole where my brains used to be.

I feel hollow forever."

Beneath the stoney sun that blocks my eyes,

breathing elemental fire,

grey and lonely,

on this warpath,

I pray someday to say,

Whisper to the night

all your secret loves—

push from parted lips and teeth

the words you smuggle in breath and tongue,

the fears that ferry you to the edge,

and the loathing that keeps your company.

Whisper to the night

when the day abandons you

and every jackal comes whining to your side,

kicking and howling at the moon

while you and your sweet voice say

"This is my home now."

Whisper to the night

your rages and your cages,

taste of iron on dessicated tongue,

fly into your fits like a fucked up bluebird

and give me back the sky,

Wait for me

in the ruin, in the soft decay,

and in the haze of ultraviolet

beating down in the open sky,

brandishing a blade made of letters—

in a secret place where

the fabric of your dress

is like time compressing,

the colours tenderly blending

like swimming underwater in the dark.

Wait for me

in that place only you and I know,

that bleeding, open-wrist home

where so much of what we are

comes crashing down around us

and the bleakest days match the blackest nights

for time spent pacing the floor

and climbing up the walls—

it's here where time finally unspools,

unwinding just enough to let the light in.

In the buried eye of sleep,

dark and intangible,

below all light and soil

lies a dream like a demon,

smouldering and heavy.

This dream will bury you

beneath the sodden dirt,

suffocating and groaning

until the wall of tears

forces you awake again.

These arms are towers,

ruined and defenseless.

Bare my nerves like teeth,

ache has rusted my bones.

An extra step,

an extra mile

With my hands like barbed wire

and a stomach like acid rain,

I crash my car into you

like so many shards of glass—

stardust in the underpass.

So many wasted hours

stuck like sandpaper and glue

on the lines and margins,

and now I've wasted you too—

Burned satellite,

watch transmission fade,

phase in and realign

the stars along your axis

like scars begging to belong

to something more alive,

something with more pulse

beneath the thin flesh of wrist

buried deep within.

Burned satellite,

watch transmission fade,

a beacon blinking in the dark

in time with your beating heart

every time you kiss me

and feed from your mouth

all your strange epiphanies,

wrapped in gold lace,

faced with new anxieties.

Burned satellite,

watch transmission fade,

float beyond the moon

and into new disease,

pale and tattered edges

of the new dawn begin again

and into this I suffer

the momentary panic

Perforated skin

stretched thin.

Made in the mist,

kissed by the cool air

and soothed into sleep.

The in-between

of shadows and blood

and the coming flood.

But now you are healing,

and still I am feeling

In all timelines,

buried at the root—

chokehold of want,

breathless and incandescent,

like the burn of static,

smell of wiresmoke and solder

infecting your clothes,

prelude to knowing,

beyond all doubt,

no shadow on the pavement,

sun in the sky,

clarity of springwater—

a prelude to knowing

Take note of the sky,

its bruises fresh as daisies,

and the aeroplane steady,

disappearing in the lavender,

now a distant memory

falling faint beneath perception

like the stars still to come

Desire is a disease

coursing through your veins,

bloodshot and viral

and consuming.

The bitter taste of want

crippling sense,

driven to frenzy.

Patchwork skinjob,

virus seething underneath.

Still prone to the fever

that guts you and

plants a flag in your skull.

The noise of the body

percolating under skin—

sharper frequencies.

Vivid pain.

I burn

and in the ash am covered,

released, and torn apart.

I burn

in the eyes of the mother,

remembering sour times.

I burn

like the end of the day,

red-eyed and sore.

I burn

in a cigarette ember,

anticipating your fingers.

I burn

In beauty as in flesh—

pockets of despair

hiding in the folds.

Warm like the glue,

I waited for rain that never came,

rain shaped like pinpricks

and the thunder overhead

filling my lungs with air,

pushing my feet to run

through the rain as it falls,

heels pounding into dirt,

reaching for something—

matchstick man moving through

the dark water of the sky.

But still it never came,

Every day a new disaster

piling up like dead leaves

on the dessicated asphalt—