I watched her dance
Her nails friction burning the ground with the knowledge of hours of
fiction learning
Sulphur connects in a flash in the tissue beneath the skin
As she revels in the last of her issues
And throws herself into velvet robes of sin
In a millisecond of perfection
Before the spark kissed the gasoline
That was braided in her hair
And the ribbons of fire tied and untied
The seams of her skin
She was beautiful even then
My perfect match.

Between the moment it took for me to wake up
And the minute it takes for me to know I am awake
I watched a million things take themselves apart
An old man pull strings and plugs
And ropes and pills and triggers
And his shoe on
I watched windows break enough times to be sand again
And a police officer curb an innocent man
And then the reality of it all
A cruel brevity of knowing
Worked its way into my throat like I were swallowing an insect
And I don’t remember what happened after that
Just black coffee and coping mechanisms  
Trying to reduce myself to a simple machine
Just a system of levers and pulleys and screws
Installing hardware in my bones
To grin and bear the grinding noise
Of a head full of stones
An art of self deception and delusions
Ignoring the ugly parts never quite worked for me.
So instead I let them wash over me some nights
And crawled through mazes of filth


I watched him paint
In splatters of screams and patterns of silence
Intricate screams like the oldest of songs
Played out with his hands in the air and on the canvas
And once he looked at me
Two black holes in a broken face
Ugly smiles reflected in a thousand glowing eyes
Eating up his own light
Until he was up to his neck in oil and ****
Horror across a starry night
Yet somehow it fit
This twisted turn of tragedy
So I took a seat across from him
And watched him paint
And he ripped the sky in half for me
And he scorched the whole earth
Lighting in a long year of drought
Or a trick of the light