you are untouchable:
dirty outsides,
dirty, dirty insides, can you bleed
like human beings? or do you break
[your bones] like monsters? hanged
by mobs of disembodied voices, robbers
who have robbed you of your human soul—
your veins are filigree of old
old worlds, screams, and passion
and in the fashion of the night, in the way
of inky dark
you touch your scars to violent whispers
because you can’t be touched, you can’t be touched
but on you,
a person
always
leaves their mark
“they bring me to my knees,” she said
kneeling by their broken beds
and she believed
in nothing and in no one
and on darkness she had fed,she fed on
christmas roses and had ulcers in her mouth,
her voice churned noise inside her and she
used her body then instead —
peeling petals from a poisoned flower
on dirty sheets
where her soul
where her wrists
and where her knees had bled
the typewriter bleeds
absinthe, crying ink;
leaping off the desk, he smells
of chronic despair, alcohol,
and cigarette[burn]s. he draws
murder down his bones,
you rasp
in
and out
the hours lapse, they
could not find your mind
inside the maze
but
they found your suit of skin
with (tired) vitals,
presumed the whole of you alive
and walked triumphantly
away
my writing has been suffering more than i have lately.
i don’t know what’s worse.
when the sons and seers of absent fathers
broke
convention,
they rewrote it;
their deserts starved our mothers;
bled our sisters;
sent our brothers off to war—
she was born with eggshell skin,
the lightning
in her veins
would crackle cold electric blue
before she bruised.
at four, she broke a dirty mirror
and older, she broke more
and she believed in god
but no one once believed in her —
she dissolved from someone
into nothing, declaring civil war inside herself
gashes down her thighs
etched-in lies
she spoke of love sometimes
like it could get her out of hell.
you once unlocked at the imagined taste of love—
you are made of
fingerprints on which you choke
but you don’t gag, they said
they liked that you don’t gag —
dirty beds
dirty words
“but you can be my whore”
you are a doorknob of a restroom
or a menu at a diner,
nothing could be worse
and nothing could be finer
than their warmth closely next to yours
or the bruises on your spine, you
believed in second chances once
then third, then fourth
until the traffic made you sicker
to the point of no return —
you must like the taste of fire though
because you [still] hunger to be burned
you cry and smile with the splitting of your skin — you feel with the irrigation laid for monsters, because your syllables are cymbals and the broken body of your heart cannot be carried through.
words
mean
nothing
gilded songs, the
cool of metal in your skin
you
forget to smile in the sun
but you smile in the wind —
rain upon your lips and
here you trip
into the unrelenting storm
shut up shut it up we try to cut it out but its shrieking beats a bass with broken dials and no control no control — we cannot let ourselves be whole, you see: sparrow pecking holes in bed sheets opening its beak to bleed out tired songs and kissing human skin to get along with all the filth inside. we try to keep it still and we try to keep it quiet but the world does not breathe for sparrow the world does not breathe for sparrow and sparrow can’t abide it.
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