Choke

Butcher's bridemeat fitting slickly around your hand.
Sewer rats and their unborn pups dripping from your hair.
Concrete like a homeless animal sniffing at your legs.
And a queen bee's birth canal expanding inside you.

retinitis pigmentosa

i often stay up much too late.
after eleven p.m. i become an anatomical genius.
sometimes a taxidermist.
sometimes a serial enucleator.
either way i stop being tempted.
i use blood and vitreous humor as finger paints.
after two a.m. i become a greedy apothecary.
i brew sickness from tea leaves.
i steal babies from their cribs.
the lack of eyes thrills me.
some things can't be found in a supermarket.
animal hides. the right kind of tea leaves.
the solitary thrill. eyes.
where do you get yours?

it gets a little hazy from here

i stand in dirty bathtubs
there are ten pints of blood
in the human body
he's lying on top of the lockers
what if he sees me
close the shower curtain
don't let the cops in
he's a big guy
how did he get here?
how did he get me?
my wrists are free
and why, fucking why
i should be terrified
but all i feel is the drugs,
and my insides have turned to sludge
i don't know where i am
so i cling to the shower curtain
and watch the door
and when it swings in
i see the sunlight on the floor
i just want to sleep, throw up,
something but
i can't lie down, there's
not enough room in the tub
so i cling to the shower curtain
i can barely stand
my friend is dead
i can't think how
can i make her alive again

i am riley's wasted sunday

your mouth is so eager to please
but your eyes seem to protest.
you spend so much time on your knees.
when was the last time you confessed?
all those years i slept on couches
i was just playing you.
you never found out about it.
tonight my body is soaked straight through.
i pulled my hood up over my head.
do you feel threatened yet?
i'm sickly and bored and tired and violent.
i was lying when i told you the rest is silence.
so let your eyes slide down your face
and eat the tattoos that you can't erase.
get off the bed. it's already stained.
don't complain. don't fucking complain.

puppies, nails, absent angels (or: the truth about vampires, part II)

we live by hunger and we burn in light
we remember the pain that came before night
we are the family so close to the fire
but brother, i got so deadly tired
of all this constant acting alone
and the deep red color of the marrow in my bones
so i gave you drugs and i called them comfort
but you wanted to bring back what made your head hurt

i don't know how the two of us got like this
i make a habit of eating altruists
but i thought you wanted to come with me
let's do this, brother! be all you can be!
we are not human though you seem to forget
when your mouth tastes like copper, the feeling you get
i know that you miss me so come on and feed
we're connected by blood, so let's make someone bleed

the truth about vampires, short version (or: making up for impatience, zeal, killing frightened animals)

you wolf, you vulture, you angel eater
made of dogs and bits of your betters
you know the scent of dark skin weeping
and when you smell it you come running

you sad excuse, you forgotten machine
your ribs cage an animal old and obscene
you may wear a fragile human raiment
but you spray godblood all over the pavement

making up for lost time, numbness, keeping frightened animals alive

when the backstabber tells you,
"this was a victory"
don't forget the universal method.
disregarding advice and looking down.
disassembling your head,
putting eyes the wrong way round
so they can roll, roll, roll
on the ground that's ground
into the soles of your feet.
the grains and rot in your soul
that your whirligig eyes can see.

i forgot how the song goes.
i slept too long this morning
and when i finally woke up everything
was so much more dangerous than it used to be,
and i keep thinking people are trying to murder me,
but maybe i just forgot how the song goes
that one hymn that everything knows.
the last line is "this was a victory"
but i take apart my brain and i can't find the rest
this is not a test. this is not a test

here's the big fucking secret.
listen up, you lowlifes,
you dogs you rancid meat,
you meat-hooks, you addicts fresh off the street.
we're all scared.
out of mind, out of breath,
so paranoid we keep our eyes going twenty-four seven.
we're scared of hardships and scared of death.
arthritic dogs kept alive from a lack of pity,
a fear that there is no heaven and some dumb loyalty.
their brains are so small they can't remember
the way that everything used to be.
yet the first line of the song is "nothing ever changes
everything will always stay the same"
but we keep forgetting with our small small brains
remember my son, this was a victory

i come up with a lot of random shit when i'm weeding and it all rhymes

so i told the man, "i kissed the coal,
i can do everything you said"
still he would not give back the child he stole,
the one that lived in my head

i didn't take it

all i see these days is whitewashed walls
dirty sheets and bottles on the floor

i'm falling apart from the inside out
you can see the chasms all over my face

my friend sleeps in the room next to me
we talk but he never seems to notice my slow dying

my words are muffled and i can't move
but he laughs and laughs and laughs

sometimes i have to turn on the tv
just to drown him out before he leaves

someone else has a room in the attic
i don't know him so well

the things he says
they hurt me

make me reach for those bottles on the floor
because that's the only way

when my words are so muffled that
even i can't hear them

when i'm paralyzed with the weight
and the effort of movement

then i stop caring and
i can finally sleep

there are pills on the ground
are they mine

they must be
no one else lives here

"if you let me have my way i swear i'll tear you apart"

if i could collect all the lies you spit
like snake venom from your lips

if i could take that black hole in your throat
that makes your guilt go down so slow

if i could peel those scars from your legs
make smooth skin from the red

if i could inhale all the smoke in your mouth
when you exhale it carefully, wincingly out

then i would.

i would swallow it all down.

and then one day,
when you finally snapped,

i would give it all back

"we prey as wolves among the sheep and slit the necks of soldiers while they sleep"

dearest son,
your mother and i
we are the ones,
the ones
who feel this love for fire,

who applaud when they run planes into towers,
god, that power,

we laughed when they shot the president
back in '63,
oswald, the mafia, and me,
and when jackie climbed over
the back of the car to grab the pieces of his brain,
god, we howled,
all that blood on her dress,
jackie darling, that's gonna leave a stain,

we vote pro-life
so that when those young girls want abortions,
they'll have to stab up their insides,
there's no more doctors, dearest daughters,
so will it be coat hangers or knives?

and we go to all those parades,
say we hate the jews and the blacks and the gays,
but really, we just like to see them all fucked over
we like to see them writhe
and all those straight christian whites
with no education
saying "thank god for damnation!"

and dearest son,
we're gonna pin it all on you,
take the blame
(it comes with the family name)
and in a decade or two
when everyone hates you
we'll be laughing at you too
because you're a decent man, dear son,
but you won't be able to take it.
no.
not those years and years and years and years
of shame.