My heart’s elastic distend remains
Serried with shattered glass.
Grant me barrage, for I cannot bear
This despair.

Our palsied, maudlin yarn.
Strewn in memories
She has long foregone
Whilst my soul corrodes there.

I want to respire
But her fire is suffocating.
My infantry boots are sewn,
And father time marches on.

Fissure the seams, let me dream
Of a land where I am not locked
By the shadows of her music-
The light over my sheets.

Blinding, I cannot read the notes.
And this melody that weeps
From my aching fingertips-
Ravenous for velvet unfelt.

Alas, I eternally smolder.
All at once, barren and brimmed .
Let me spill my hate, my love.
Over the canvas of this silent reverie.

Little lamb, lone in the brush
Without a mother’s feed.
Who is to groom the gloss
Of her delicate clothing?

Little lamb, who sings to me,
Unlettered melodies,
Why does she wag forth
These eyes of rust—
In pensive gloat ache
Sipped sinews of her throat?

Little Lamb, bleating to bleed,
Ventures frail, tender limbs
Deep within Tophet’s Vale.
Meek, she slips in buried sheets.

Little Lamb, orchid chewed to root
Bask and bathe the moon
Twixt her thighs.
Splayed upon pastures
Nourished with tears.

Wine spilled into the milk of being.
She drinks the rich grain.

Banished before thon barren plains,
Where treacherous tears abstain
Fare. Fair is the waste,
The impurity of deep, decrepit weeds.
And dage brings fruit then touched
Only by their ravens of rot.
May they paint thine tainted stave
In golden garth and lull the lark;
“Mine, Sweet babe,
Robbed of cradle
Readied for ritual.
Mine, Sweet babe,
Gore masked black
Within the crimson bath.”
Lacen their throats, the gullets that gloat!
Lest langes of thorns, wrap the bairn sworn.
Death breeds glore o’er luid nights
Beldam rise belles in wicked repel.
Round the funeral pyre.

I woke up one night
And I cried:
"Papa, I don't want to die!"

It is so sad when I look
To that child of the past-
Long forgotten and still
He weeps.

I am but a feigned rendition
of the boy inhabiting this soul.

We are so different
As oil upon water.
Yet how can I say
I was never him?

As now nothing
Seems more sweet.

That delicate snowflake
Fell into streams
Long spent, and yet
I sent for him.

Little did he know
His ending was not in death.
But he cannot be found.
Silent is the child's cry.

Souls, once one in the sun,
Now reach for fallen stars.
Ludic, hopeless fingers—
G r a s p i n g
For a sole thread of truth.

Don’t fly too close, little firefly.
For it’s flame shall render
All your desires and dreams
To spurned puddles of wax.

D r i p p i n g

In these wrinkled hands
Formed for puppets
A silhouette on the sphere
As the Earth only knows,
The darkness it adheres.

Descry the glittering sand,
Every coin is vestal, unused.
He cast unto the well,
Uttering a spell
That dwindled on his aching lips.

Amiss, his voice does not graze
Her conscious divination.
A thousand times again,
He strives-
Just for a spare thought.

But the fool, consumed, controlled
Wallows in the walls
She sculpts around him.

He begins to work away the vines
Of her honied tendrils.
Yet, each finger twined of gossamers,
Drenched in delirium.

Nay, she rejects his presence.
But grants her endless visitations
As a specter, with a Faustian kiss.

He drinks of her,
To parch his arid throat.
Remote, he holds the seed
Which festers within.
Forever.