(Just another fragment of an unfinished poem.. this one and the last might end up being fused together, I don’t know. They’re about the same things, just written at different times in my life)

Humans are synonymous with

consumption

Always hungry hungry hungry

You want to feel clean

so you eat of christ

His flesh lingers on your

split snake tongue

Can you taste it when you sin?

Bad men who want to know

good women —

they lick their bones clean

They think they

earned it earned it earned it

I know shame like I know my own

hands . . .

Sometimes, the two are the same

It’s not a holy thing,

it doesn’t make you more christ-like.

It just makes you scared to look

d o w n

every time you bathe.

There it was. The unearthly

visage,

as if it were a pulsing,

flowing tide —

as if it lived and breathed.

My eyes struggled to explain

the cosmic ray of light,

A coffee-stain upon my vision,

in ways my mind could grasp.

The image burned itself

into my retinas

so I could see it still

with every tiresome blink.

I became horribly aware

of the nature of color —

Amalgams of blinding lights

Existing at different frequencies

Being absorbed and reflected

endlessly.

What power, what exhaustion

our minds must be privy to

to process it all

so seamlessly?

What strength, then,

Must the color before me hold

To defy the human brain?

Something going on inside

my mind

Can’t think can’t do

anything I try to write

what I don’t know I feel

afraid of what you’ll find

Between the ebbs and flow of

ugly words —

I don’t feel fine but not

bad either, more like

There’s something rattling

inside my brain

Let it out.

I don’t want to think about

the smothering air

and we’ll-mannered pain

Let me out.

-

//I finished before 3 minutes but it felt right, so I just edited the line lengths a bit before the three minute mark //

My house has four rooms

It can feel more like a hundred.

Each room, holds millions more

depending on the day

each second, an hour more

for however long I stay.

The doorways, all so timeless

and flexible —

In my room, there lays my bed

and in my bed, I lay.

my bedroom, the fortress

and my bedroom, the maze.

The rest of the house, always

maladaptive —

She can feel almost foreign

at least on the hollow days.

my house, the infinite

and my house, the malaise.

To all the fires I’ve put to death,

Save for my own temerity,

Yield my life, and dust my pleasures.

But do not touch my flesh

Or graze my lips, however gently;

For whatever burns shall singe,

And what shall singe will

Scar, and blind —

Like Zeus’ flame,

Blinking swiftly upon Semele,

Making their universe of embers.

Who will be there

when all things end?

Who’ll pick through the

restless, quiet

malaise and star-

struck expenditures

of lazy comet trails, toiling

through what’s left

of our little

cosmic footprints?

What celestial bodies will

debate us

and if we ever were?

What benevolent god,

do you think,

may call us a priority

out in the impossible

vastness of all

the possible universe?

I wear many masks —

all different, yet reflective;

The son, the friend, and

the martyr’s corpse.

All hand-made for

each relative who still calls,

and one for the strangers

on the walk home.

I wear these masks —

these cheap imitations

like swords and armor

for my sallowed skin

I wear these lies

because I must

and for all the eyes

I do not trust.

My body is mismatched and

self-sabotaging;

a collection of stories

told in scars that won’t heal.

In this patchwork skin,

I am disconnected —

transposed by every glimpse

of what your gods

insist is a temple.