The pencil-pushers wipe their hands
across their crimson lips,
they lick the blood of angels
from their sticky fingertips.
They stare at you with vacant eyes
that never seem to blink,
they sign their names in triplicate,
and teeter on the brink.
The fashionistas call their friends
a hundred times a day,
they stammer their desires,
since they don’t know what to say.
They sleep in beds they make themselves,
the sheets are clean, but torn,
they prick their fingers bloody
on the sharp ecstatic thorn.
The clock controls their every move,
they curse its fluid name,
they metronome their beating hearts,
but every day’s the same.
Their rhythms are predictable,
they’re tidal to the moon,
they stagger down the street like zombies,
singing sorrow’s tune.
Chaos is their only answer,
(winter’s charms aside),
they use the ancient art of exhumation
as their guide.
They fill the empty spaces in their lives
with lemon tea,
glasses smudged with fingerprints
make beauty hard to see.
They weave their spells from sticky threads,
it’s all they have of love,
ouija boards and voodoo dolls
is what they’re dying of.
They paint the town on Friday nights,
the music never ends,
they bind their hands, with comical results,
and curse their friends.
Their hearts believe in magic,
they’re a generation lost,
their pencils dull with adding up
the night’s elusive cost.
The pencil-pushers love their dolls
in every shape and size,
the flames of love’s desires lost
lie dormant in their eyes.
Their waiters bring them watermelon
laced with alcohol,
the chances of them ever going home
are very small.
They’re autobiographical,
convincingly direct,
they’d love to dance the tango,
but they just can’t stand erect.
They take their time with everything,
they can’t afford mistakes,
as fragile as existence is,
it’s only bone that breaks.
Ribs protrude at angles odd,
opaque beneath the skin,
fruit lies rotten on the ground,
they eat, but still, they’re thin.
They tell their tales in monotone,
but no one knows the truth,
they crunch the bones of nameless wingless birds,
and break a tooth.
Their glasses fog with every breath,
they curse their vanity,
the surface rust of glitter makes
their faces hard to see.
They wax their legs and burn their bras,
they dream, because they can,
they said I was a fount of information,
for a man.
Their constant chatter makes me sad,
they sing like dying whales,
they chase the sun across the moon,
but beauty always fails.
The undertakers wears a hat,
his cheeks are powdered pink,
desire makes the organ of eternal darkness
shrink.
They add inflation to the list,
then multiply by two,
when summer came, the scattered seeds
of yellow roses grew.
My fingers moved so fast that I
could not control their art,
silver thread and golden needles
stitched the devil’s heart.
I drew a face, then crossed it out,
it never comes out right,
maybe I’m the one who needs
the mirror’s moonlit night.
I drew a face as pale as death,
it always looks the same,
the architecture underneath the flesh
is not to blame.
Maybe it’s geometry, or maybe it’s just
bone,
the heart that never sheds a drop of blood,
cannot be sewn.
mt forest
July 21 2015
#374