We are the wretched broke down souls
Running through the boulevards
Though the warning bells do toll
We are hunted by our cards
Unfairly dealt, but the game is done
It is never us who won
We know who we are
Our eyes of shattered glass
The asylum is never far
And neither is our past
But still we sprint until collapse
Little pieces, found and captured.
Our minds have veered off the map-
Us of the mutual psychotic rapture

They said this year, Saturn
will leave my house
In retrograde
Trailing jade silk amongst
the black trees
But still, it snows
and still, I ride
On this ghost train
to the coldest hell
Couldn’t you have left a star
to gaze upon?
While my lips drip ice
and my eyes stay
open
To see the mess you
made
For me to clean in
darkness

the window of your house
is like a television screen
for those nighttime walkers
they gather around
faces pressed against the glass
trying to catch the scent
of us
when our show ends
i will be like them
so hungry for you

There are no breaks
From my mistakes
So I seek to canonize
Every well-spun lie
Like children they are to me
Lovely things that wish to flee
The tunnel of my mouth

Torn from the wallet of the eye- a tear
Shunned for coming as it come
The cathartic shame of soulful slum
A derelict ship of the fleet of composure
A captive buys casket, but what of enclosure?

We fall to the silence of fear
Pile it high and bury it low
Yet still these mice of woes do flow
Over marble pages of black and white
Confirming the captain slipped away in the night

I do not count sheep
So little I care for sleep, instead—
Two windows of red
Pressed against glass
As those white cars pass, strange
The limit of domain and range
Die in my mind
But what of the mice,
When the cat plays nice? No bite
To provoke the nightly fight
Against my dreams
Though when I try to wake
For appearances sake, I think
Of what is brave and real, but
I do not wish to feel
Such things

my body is a trash can
a dumping ground for mistakes
every day is a morning after
every day breeds saccharine aches

bruised lips and handlebar hips
a naked exposé of wrong
from tarpit lungs, through purple teeth
eerie hisses of my afflicted song

the poison flower blossoms only once
infernal fragrance of forgive-me-nots
no tide rinses the sins of night
at 1400 weeks this vessel rots