Enjoy!

~Here's to Freedom~

I saw it, sir, the well-kept fear
Masked by those surly grins latched across that easy stance,
A majestic oak unable to be cut with just a blood-washed dagger.
But there was an ax lying beneath the dishevelment of the shed,
The one we built together in the brisk morning air of my Black Sunday.

It was the last Sunday I could call mine,
And my memory, like you asked, pressed it into the darkness
Of life to be forgotten. And the terror that I’d reminisce,
It’s been engraved silently into those enthralling irises
You wear so boldly, unnoticed.

Now... I can grasp the handle–swing the ax.
Remember telling me to vanish, wind through reeds, breath through lips?
No, I will not realize that murder with my own talons;
Killing is your forte.

Don’t look so shocked, sir! As you fondled the blood,
Reveling in the blissful massacre, you forgot to dispose of that ax...
So I cut,
A glass of your finest wine stirring at my mouth’s edge.

Here’s to you. Remember to wave
At those once bountiful grins on your way down.
They’re mine now.

~Lover's Lament~

My eyes met his first, a loving union of father and daughter.
Indigo and amber, we prospered with fingers woven intricately,
Heaven grinning as he and I bled beauty.
Each day we’d spin, quilted by yonder oaks and pattering melodies.
But father, he did have a new Earth at his palm’s edge.

“Just for you,” he said gingerly, tossing it into my open embrace.
Oh, strange! I thought it certain to be something of kindling passion,
And it was. Sweet affair, I hope to pat tilled gravel down upon.
Convincing as he made it, I did not wish for such an intrusion
On our once beloved waltz.

He won’t dance with me anymore,
Yet my hand still senselessly yearns for him to grasp it.
I do miss the spinning–the singing oaks. Oh, Father,
You are surely a monstrous man of ill wishes,
And such to be met, my wish.

Beneath water am I each moment your light casts over,
As I delve for solemnity. I want to suffocate,
But only when you mutter I may.
Tighten his grip. Don’t let me breathe his lover’s breath.
I shall not taste such luscious workings of bitterness...
Unless he asks.

And between our fettered glimpses stood Lance, forthrightly so.
He, a stallion glistening darkness like the fire he bore,
What a daring touch he had–tender... Hollow.
My youth was made not to resist such a brush of heated flesh.
So began an unrequited illusion of a new sea.

I could not drown here, not with Lance and our shadows.
But he wanted murder, he did, letting intoxication match his best.
Oh, the day I realized this unrequited illusion to be as it was, I did fall.
My blood still makes him luminous by moonshine,
But I have forced myself to become forgetful.

I stood, unable to twirl or dream a lie of reflecting emotions.
Yes, and then there was Neill, a childhood sweetheart long since seen,
His face reverberating as sunrise to my defeated orbs lost glumly in distance.
There was no water here.
At last, at last... I could live without dancing.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “Do you like this life anew?”
A choice? My heart did lighten to touch starlight then,
Such majestic triumph I’d never held so closely.
Why did he take it back, oh love? In his coffin, it does lie sleeping.

I am suffocating once more, lusting that dance, mourning my illusion.
What nothingness has love made me?
And drown again, I will, just to taste it.

~Phantom~

Cloaked in night, he saunters past me,
A messenger of the stars and keeper of moons.
He smiles; the light he bears glistens above my own,
The radiance of suckled deliverance.
Touch—I need him deeply, as the gold of autumn.

In the chamber, he waits for me, dark and tender.
A secret kept untold, we caress the limbs of our forbidden wood.
I meander, raining upon lithe clouds as I approach him.
Our gazes kiss sweetly, his and mine,
And it is so, our indulgence flowers as new life.

My phantom glides only for my will, beauty in black.
But our affair is tethered to strings of incoherence;
They are frail, worn by impulsion, fickle spontaneity.
I strike each time he draws near.
An embrace. A kiss.

But my soul became visible in our shower of lustful wishes,
A hideous creature my phantom did run from.
Pensive cobblestones were not embedded into his path,
Tortuous turns of misery.

I did love him, sweet phantom.

~Pendulum~

Back and forth, the pendulum swings bleakly,
Bloodless, clean, its desire unfolding.
A man kept unkempt lies ‘neath it meekly,
Swallowing the taste he’d been withholding.

Steel like lit passion to the blinded gaze,
It glides swiftly as a glossy haven.
Slice; life curdles into a severed maze,
Escapes tarnished as an ashy raven.

Passively, the gaunt mortal vanishes.
Not an exit he keeps in his thoughts sweet;
He is brazen, seeking blackened wishes.
Goodbye, pendulum his body did meet.

Freedom! Darkness is his rhythm to dance,
Eternal, his night, an elated trance.

~A Daughter’s Cry~

Beneath sun and moon, I emanate no goodness
For your holy gaze to grasp defiantly.
My voice is sullen. Sly as a hunter’s footwork,
My words are cautious and assured.

A seemingly transparent skin embraces me
As I pass by you with hands tense, built in stone.
A whore like me walks to torment, flaunting her misdemeanors
To those who have bled at her feet.

Seasons have met us, yet you still cannot see
The gold autumn leaves–the summer’s lament of blooming roses.
I remain bound by the webbed clutches of the-other-woman.
I saw the tearing seal of your home, and I took a half in each palm.

“Her mind shall know no slumber,” I said sadistically,
“For her husband latched himself onto me, and I did not despair.”
My body became haven for his lacking will,
And so it is me whom you seek to punish.

Justice is not met in the strength of vengeance;
It is you who taught me that. Why must our war
Begin in the inverse of the lesson you so shrewdly beat into me?
Was it foolish? Do you find me an exception?

I know that, yes, I do embody what you call evil,
But it is not in my taste to take the form in cackles of garish delight.
My service is not to injure you in a spiteful vendetta, Mother.
This whore does know goodness.

Abhorrence has blinded you.

~Sleep~

Can't you hear the nests rustle with a soothing draft?
Bark is perched gently across the bodies of whispering birches.
They say a shadowed lantern will carry you in arms tender,
Warm breath melting anxiety from your unceasing hold.

Your gaze will grow to ash, seeping into a hypnotic waltz,
But your lips will draw closer to your cheeks of pale moonlight.
Sleep and listen to your lullaby.
It calls in drowning voices that mirror across a black, silken night.

You will join them in their cry, reaching to grasp their night.
The lantern now rattles--its chains are offered.
It is a peaceful abduction, silencing your chest's rumbling tempo.

The shadows have fallen upon you now.
Listen to the billowing noises as they murmur,
"Sleep."

~One Drink Too Many~

Forgive me, love...
My savage roses have plundered the silken field of your once bare beauty,
Taking you as my own to maneuver with resilient thorns.
I left you for dead against rumbling gravel, your eyes stifled by emptiness,
For my hands held tightly the gold dance you once possessed.

I was the shivering breath that silenced your flame
With a leer I've not since pursued with such vicious torture.
I stood as you poured another glass, swallowing your known poison,
And I didn't move or speak, bound by the words you could never hear.

The hands were mine that deftly patted the sand atop your grave.
Numbly so, I painted you a nameless headstone, strokes vague and subdued.
Eyes would never meet your talents--your dance.
Your smile vanished amongst the cries of the blinded that I created.

I stand without you now as dust sifts past me.
Your body rots inside the coffin I built so quickly for you.
My promise to you was shattered, a moonless night...
An ended dream.

And here I wait upon a hilltop of soot in blackness, wishing to utter them,
The words you'd not allowed to make a sound.
Stop. Let the pain cease in the rolling fog you've given me.
Let me say goodbye.
We will both be forgiven.

~Night Walkers~

A cardboard box holds me beneath this shower of soaring shadows.
My skin is sleek with brilliant rain,
Glazed with the bloodless moon that grimaces in fiery anguish.
Chin resting coldly on the bruises that my knees have welcomed,
I watch them—these men—saunter past.

They have bound themselves to my searing flesh,
Have reveled in the echo of my painless screams.
I know they’ve waited and danced along the quick rhythm
Of savoring fear.

Blades against my skin, hands trailing eagerly in search of liberation…
They have bathed their bodies selfishly
In the absence of my once living innocence.
Yet these night walkers, they don’t turn a head
And take notice of the one that offered her tears without quaking.

My blood stains the crumbling walls of graffiti,
Where words to the weak and feeble unknowingly prosper.
“Take it all in, boys. That is my sacrifice,” I want to say.
But this seal won’t tear,
Secured by promises of for-the-better silence.

This is my third hour without a night walker to hold
In thorny clutches kept distant for lack of attachment.
The flood strikes faster against my box of latent desire.

But does it still remain,
The captivating sensuality once held by this beaten form,
In which I am eternally stifled by the foolish whims
Of the man I still call Father?

He thrives among night walkers,
But even he will not wrap himself around the daughter of the damned.
Profit and trade, scrapes along the icy, slick concrete,
Revolvers against my head, hidden trepidation consuming me softly…
I know not another way to breathe soullessly—silently.

My box shifts slightly as a heated wind blows past.
I shudder at the warmth.
The world is meant for numbness of shameless pursuit.
My night walkers used to whisper that with shallow breaths, their voices low.
“Show me,” I’d return without glancing away from my fixated darkness.

Alone in a cardboard box.
I know now what their husky words that seemed so meaningless meant.
With tainted pleasure, you lose all feeling and senseless dreams.
Oh, I do long for my night walkers.

~Sanctuary~

I'm bleeding from the head, pooling out rippling cries of damned resistance.
Shards of glass glisten like crystal tears inside my severed skin,
Smiling in the darkness. Sanctuary--I need sanctuary.
He's right behind me. A mere shadow among the stars shifting,
Darting wildly at my back, he wants to hold my life
At the brims of his bloodstained soul.

Silver streaks my face, drums barreling against all sound...
I won't let him catch me--let him paint hell in blood that was not meant
To drown the cowardly in cruel reflection of insanity.
He shattered his empty bottle across my head, for I would not take him.

Boxes packed inside this warehouse I'm storming through
Hang over my screams as bare, jagged trees,
Hollow like the face I wear in sudden shame.
I don't want to be this girl of blackness that a man would willingly murder.

I have no where to run now.
I fall against the gravel, tremors building within me,
Growing towers of nothingness that fill me with sunken devastation.
He is over me, ready to end it all and take a final shot.
Fingers tighten around my bloody neck like shriveled reeds.

"Sanctuary," I gasp, unable to fight the man covering me.
And then another man, my sanctuary, was there beside me,
A blade slit through the one who thirsted the taste, my tainted blood,
His last cry reverberating within the windows of my clouded mind.
This new man offered a gentle smile. "Sanctuary will always be here," he said.
"Always."

I do know that, Father...

~Lonely Behind a Willow~

City lights dazzle like the glitter of the dress she longs to wear
As she walks slowly across concrete dreams of distant touch,
The crowds swift fireflies,
Passing by her in motions of luminous disdain.
She is the drizzle of lost hope—the one they run from.

Rain clouds envelop the lost, dotted sky,
Painful beacons of the expectation she once wore so flawlessly,
The mercury entities of her flowing cries.
She walks as a teardrop unable to fall—frozen,
Silently wandering the path of cobblestone hearts
That linger as they are crushed beneath the soles of the grimacing Lonely.

“Wait not to be broken,” Lonely sings gently like a soft breeze of new spring.
“Shatter yourself until there are no pieces left to cradle or crack.”
The woman nods as she always does,
Closing the branches of the willow that lets her taste its dew each sunrise.

Oh, how she adores the draping leaves that wilt so softly in her gaze.
She is sheltered behind them to live without feeling.
“Isolation is free from pain,” Lonely says, nipping her earlobe
With fangs of lustful nothingness.

She cannot feel. Lonely won’t let her.
But is pain worse than being without a soul to take hold of it?
She has not an answer—not a sound she can utter in her forced silence.
This woman is Lonely.

~Hush~

Let the poison rain hide my disquiet,
Promote sadness and flaw, but speak no fear.
I often keep such a mask at hand—at the brims of my sunken eyes.

The sweet, scented violet at my shoulder weeps with me,
Tears seeking the depths of the weaving
Of this blanket that encases me—strangles me.
I have become my own stranger, this girl wrapped in solemn despair,

For what can I do with this choice of lingering obscurity
That taunts me like the mercy and liberation of waiting death?
Shall I ignite the flame of new life and lift the heavy veil of sacrifice?
Or has fate spoken
That I must silence this plundering etude of enclosing perplexity?

Listen, an infant cries in distance and bleakness.
My body wilts as a fallen rose petal, sympathy seeking my heart with gentle arms
Of charred indecisiveness and culpability.
Should these hands become mother to the innocence I hear?

“What do you want from me?” I ask,
Leaning toward the captivating sound with dithering uncertainty.
Dewdrops float off my lips, illuminating like dancing fireflies
As I sing a lullaby of latent feeling,
And the cries cease.

With stillness, my heart whispers delicately,
“Yes, I’ll love you, child.”

~To Love a Torturer~

I am a puppet to your waiting fingertips of overcoming malice,
In constant subject to the timeless junction of impaling misery.
Oh, but how I grin each time
I feel your hidden hands brush mine with soft pleasure.

To love a torturer should be such a venomous, plaguing sin.
But how am I to escape the glorious hold
Of one that infuses me with undeniable elation?

You of sputtered laughter,
You slaughter me as you shield yourself above night's sky,
Leaving my heart to duel with impending sorrow.
Each evening you wait in my quarters.
You need me for your heaven;

I am yours for the taking—for the massacring.
I love you, murderous beauty that haunts me ‘neath starlight.
You bring color to my skin—luminosity to my orbs
Of once lifeless hollow.

But in my absence of you—desire—I am fettered to limitless nothingness.
Without your sweet caress and tender love,
Pain has not a boundary to capture it with binding talons.

Oh, I do hate you, master.
I wish not to melt as late snow at your feet.
But, my midnight torturer, I do…
I need you to blind me in roses of romance.

Even in the relentless cruelty and melancholy,
I will wait anxiously for your next visit.
And as I do, I’ll hold my breath…
Until I can live again.

~Girl in Lavender~

She walks like an aimless spirit amongst shadowed raindrops,
Body fitted in a lavender, satin gown, face and beauty of a dancing siren.
I do not know this girl—this precious emblem of insanity.
Why would someone walk in the rain with such an ensemble,
Feet frozen and captured by enveloping oceans of despair?

But I should not and do not care.
She may walk in whichever way she chooses,
And I will watch helplessly from a corner hilltop with fire rusting silently in my eyes.
Something hangs over this girl, tickling me softly like the wind of night,
Handing me luscious restlessness and misery.

As she moves in circles around burnt trees of pine,
I wonder if she has lost her way or perhaps her own mind.
Even at such a distance, I know her eyes are empty as a starless sky.
Her face is merely shining with the sheet of sprinkling ice.

I have never liked lavender.
I’ve always preferred a hue red as autumn’s gift.
But this girl, caught and frozen, has become fallacy to me.
Her body quakes; I know she must be sheltered and warmed,
Yet I remain still as a headstone of cold, angelic cruelty,
Unable to shift with shuddering storms and dancing spirits.

Who is she that my sight does behold?
Can she capture her own presence without a thorn embedded in her grasp?
My gaze sharpens against the fading, tarnished blanket,
And this girl of bleak, I realize, is my past existence.
Yes, I never did like lavender.

~Dying Candle~

Pale flesh glistens ‘neath the falling moonlight
Like a withered star of lost desire.
A young girl lies on the cold and searing concrete,
Letting the sky’s bitter ice run like seeping dewdrops across her gaunt face.
She is waiting in darkness
With only the night’s gift and a single, burning candle at her side.

Battered and bruised, she watches the flickering flame with a lustful gaze,
Reaching out to caress the melting wax.
She is beautiful, ebony hair of grace upon ivory skin,
Eyes of depth and latent secrets infused with foolishness and wisdom.

Oh, but she is waiting in the rain with a lit candle,
Ghostly wind murmuring for it to die—for smoke to rise.
She wishes the very same fate, for only with release can she breathe.
This nightmare that thrives in the windows of her mind devours her slowly
With talons like daggers of sacrificed blood and dreams.

Is it this guilt that makes her keep waiting,
Or is it merely that she was born to be smothered in hopeless misery
And to wait?
“Rise,” she calls out pleadingly like a lost child in aimless expect.
“Please let this ash rise. Burn out.”

But the rain and the night stop.
She begins to feel weightless as the sun peeks out of the burnt, auburn sky,
Offering her a loving embrace of warmth and comfort.
The once dark clouds are dancing in powdery, white leotards,
Crying sweet honey and playful color.

Still, old wounds begin to crack as the girl leaps toward the open light.
Blood milk streams out in thick sheets, swallowing the one who is no longer waiting.
In one feeble breath, the candle goes out.
With sadness comes life, and with happiness comes death.
The girl is gone.

~Daybreak~

Smiles like those of frosted windows sprinkle across daybreak,
Waving to a man at the edge of a powdered, dirt road.
The icy wind envelops him with a ghostly whisper.
And though he shivers and rattles, he does not wear a coat.

He is a widower, this man, face worn and beaten with penitence,
Lacking daybreak’s many grins of crystal white.
Each day and night he is there, searching for a way to reach the changing sky,
Yet his hands sit firmly inside of his tattered pockets.
In doubt, he cannot move,
For with what fate does uncertainty lie?

So he holds his place beside the street, a lit pipe his only company.
His eyes of distant blue watch the grass join the wind in an endless dance.
Each draft beholds a similar movement to the preceding blow,
And the clouds of gray indifference always churn in the same direction,
Away from the twirling quickstep.

But what about daybreak?
The enticement of his stillness so easily bows to the majesty of the rising sun.
So why must he remain locked in the confines of solitude
In absence and antagonism of the waiting smiles?

Sometimes he thinks about running.
He dreams of a day when he’ll no longer wait for inspiration,
When he’ll kick off the old shoes that have held him against gravel for so long
And flee into fear, letting his face wrinkle relentlessly in rapture.

But he always stops himself,
For with what fate does uncertainty lie?
That question in itself is uncertain.

~Can you see the lights?~

My head rests against the soft, burgundy rug beneath me
As I capture the lights above me with touches of lithe intimacy.
“Love, can you hear me?” I breathe through my bitter lips,
Holding the scent of beauty and pine at my shoulder.
I laugh with stifled cries of solitude,
Letting myself give in to the warmth—the glittering majesty.

“Can you see them?” I ask, my words quiet like the photo on my nightstand.
It never speaks a word, caught in one moment of smiles and laughter.
A memory of glorious rapture and cooing winds of soothing company,
Yes, that is you.
“Can you see the lights?”

Sparkling glass of bright gold and red echo my solemn eyes.
I can see happiness strung across this tower of branches and frost,
But my mind of chaos is tucked away from such evident illusions,
Tied down by chains and driving stakes.
Still, even they do not make a sound.
Silence.

I patiently wait underneath flickering hues of splendor for your answer,
For what is a melody without a sweet harmony at its side,
An angel without wings of feather to soar?
Nothing.

~Twilight~

A hand of blood and jagged ice severs twilight’s dream;
Raze the window of selfish desire, and thrive in lavish splendors.
Twilight needs not a vision to hold with frivolous hope,
But only a shriveling grasp of earnest damnation
And an endless binding to the somber being of nothingness.

The red dye of forgotten ashes drips like dancing rain across the calloused hand.
Cries of sincere sympathy cannot fall from those who watch without care,
For the hand wears a smile like that of a frolicking child,
Carefree and unwilling to stroke the smooth blanket of devastation.
And so the setting sun of twilight truly dissipates without a tear to catch.

The ebony velvet of night spreads upon Earth, if only to shield the sun.
Still, without such shining luminosity, the twilight cannot prosper—live.
So why is it stifled so ruthlessly behind shadows and soiled blood?
Is it not the hand that so blissfully strangled light,
That fell quickly to such misdemeanor?

Twilight suffers. Twilight dies.
The night protects without cause or a true life to hold in the absence of menace.
Glowing dreams of majesty are set against a darkened corner,
Vanishing amongst fluttering dust and black soot.
The bloody hand laughs.

~Save me~

A boy is drowning,
Suffocating against bashing hills of withered lies.
He pleads in a dance with winter’s tears.
As the night sky dims to reflection.
This boy of shattered hope is all the mirror can hold without breaking.

I walk against the rattling wind,
My face glazed, shimmering like thin ice.
I want my sweet midnight sky to wrap me in beaded arms,
To let me taste bitter relief.
But this boy is above me—all around me.
I can only succumb to his lullaby of shrill screams.

“Save me,” he cries in a fated whisper of lost breath,
His eyes wide, shining tales of frozen life.
My hand will not reach—a dead yearning grounds me.
So I watch him sink into shrouded blackness,
A veil tied around his throat—my own.
As he fades, it billows like rolling waves of silk;
It dies with him.

Why did I wait for the sky
While he was smothered in the murmur of death and my own foolish dreams?
His light is lost, and I am blinded—numb.
My hands rise toward heaven weakly
As I realize whose arms I truly long for.
I call out to him with resounding trepidation,
“Save me.”

~A Reason to Live~

Painted winds of a golden glow
Rain across my bare, frozen skin,
Laughing with powdered clouds and soaring pine needles.
Twigs snap beneath my tarnished feet, softly brushing silence.
Is it for this that I live?

Call me a demon—a relentless evil,
And I shall remain amongst whispers and tickles without feeling,
Without a cloth to cover this chilling nakedness.
Murmur me greatness, sweet tales of fervent embrace;
I will not seek the thriving heat for which I yearn.

Earth turns, its own earth washing past me,
Sifting through the darkness of forbidden tree bark.
Evil would do so well to fly with it while the hero would step back,
But I will not lose myself to such acquiescence,
This body of blinded nothingness.

Meet the wind’s constant speed, I shall not.
I wish for no path of gravel to till ‘neath my toes.
If I truly am nothing—a shadow—why should I capture ambition?
Unable to flinch before or hold poison sand,
I am neither pure nor tainted.
Nothing.

The cool November air falls across my body in thin, icy sheets
Of gentle and billowing comfort,
And contradicts my numb spell of paralysis.
A wisp of nonexistence cannot feel such things,
But I can with an immense crispness,
And that is what I live for.

~Rose Garden~

A rose petal falls, brushing the earth with its splendor,
Softly sighing in its warming liberation.
Those who watch in marvel are fated to hold the garden,
Unable to capture the missing petal.

The stems they see are soft—flawless,
Each bloody thorn a mere wisp of preexisting bindings.
The flowers are grinning in perpetual ecstasy;
Their tears are frail whispers,
And so imagination continues its artificial salvation.

Fern leaves trickle over the dying without remorse,
Reflecting the rising sunlight with only a laugh.
“We do not cry,” they breathe quietly to the shuddering wind that passes.
“Sadness is sin.”

Sanctuary, it catches those who cannot find balance
In the arms of wisteria and rose.
But as winter kisses the garden with frozen lips,
The flowers wilt—suffocate.

The overlooking see only a filling array of color and bliss;
Emanating pain falls mute,
And I know I will starve in this mask of illusive glee.
So wash away my painted sunrise,
And free me from my rose garden.

~Shattered Clarinet~

Immersed in embellishing silk, I hold my breath
As your clarinet softly sings sweet lullabies of sorrow.
Outside, there are paths, twisting like gnarled branches.
Poison rain kisses each face beneath its trail;
But we seek love’s invisibility with ardent desire,
And you play your clarinet without rehearsal.

The chandelier above your head smiles with glistening light,
Tossing you the fame of glitter and iridescence.
Your fingers move like billowing reeds as you stray from your music stand.
Without the comfort of drawn stems, you turn to me;
I am your melody—beauty embedded in smooth fabric.

Banshees are painted on the windows of our seclusion,
Screaming for blood to bathe in,
Relishing in the bitter taste of death.
Your gaze obstructed, you move blindly through the glass,
And I am lost.
As the instrument shatters—breaks,
The song dies; I will never breathe again.

~Strings~

Looming buildings of gray solitude brush past us
As we stride through beckoning alleyways,
His arm hanging deftly on my shoulder’s brim,
A smirk plastered firmly on my face.

We are the devils of lust caught in limiting flesh
Who seek only to be sought.
His lips meet my neck as we pause our strut.
“Don’t smile,” he says, nipping the corners of my mouth.
“You are better suited with a tear.”

Breath a rattling skeleton, I only nod.
I am his puppet, unable to free myself from these impenetrable strings,
Foolishly dancing before him.
This plastic face that he watches with laughter
Cannot seek the balcony of happiness.

My hourglass of surging mistakes
Is not to be turned over;
Yet how I wish to go back—to regain my lost time.

I step forward, his hand cradled in mine.
I hold it tightly.
Why fight what I can’t escape from?
This air that I’ve lost will not be regained.
He’s captured it in a steel jar
If only to watch me suffocate.

Dare I whisper, “This is wrong”?
He will not hear me,
Deaf by the screams of his sadistic hands.
Pretend to breathe—to be soulless,
I will.
Dust blowing sand dunes across our numb feet,
We will walk amongst the oblivious.

It is then that my eyes snap open.
The bleak structures around me still threaten,
It is still the same blackened alley,
But my hands are empty—cold.
He has left my submissive side,
And I still cannot smile.

Oh, ghosts of lost life and penitence,
Let me go.

~Dances of the Addicted~

She entices the blinded with her tantalizing dance
Of tightening lace and reverberating sighs.
Provoking sin with her swaying body,
She drowns in the icy depths of submission,
Enveloped in the illicit cravings of those who watch her.

Her stage is set; she is the merciless imp
Of arousing exquisiteness.
Her hands move across her flaming skin,
Capturing the longing gazes surrounding her.

Tainted murmurs shatter in quick tempo,
Mirroring her boiling blood and staggering breathing.
She is slender, smooth—perfectly portrayed
In her slipping lingerie,
Lights glittering like beads across her form.

A boy watches this in an unending trance,
Following her movements with careful attention.
She risks a smile as she reaches for his waiting hand.
“Dance with me,” she whispers heatedly,
Claiming his body with a selfish grasp.

The crowd begins to dissipate
As the two steal the stage,
Set on foolish desires and looming emotions.
They are fated to fall,
To miss an unpracticed step.

Her heart grins at such an ending
As she presses against him, driving him into her madness.
They move as if riding a gentle wind,
Gliding like stray cherry blossoms.
Kissing his forehead softly, she releases him into the dimming lights,
And he is the first to fall.

~Poison~

Serpents slither around my body,
Encircling me with the venom I long for
Strike me, sweet poison; let me fall into the murmuring death you proffer
Let me hold you close and writhe in your frightful ache

Blood surges from the wounds of a thousand needles
As I lie cold against a stone alley wall,
My lips frozen in the unending smile of frivolous content
Seizing, I cannot rise from my striking plummet

The air is still like the breath of silence
That decants slowly off of my toxic lips
Let it be with this nothingness that I find true freedom
From the ceaseless noise that cackles around me with cynical grins

Luminosity beckons me forward, though I am unmoving
As the fangs of my serpents sink into my waiting flesh,
Quickly pulling me into a state of chaste oblivion,
Lightning coursing softly in my veins

I reach for it, the thriving illumination,
And my form is captured by glossy starlight
So let me flourish in such satisfaction and desire;
Let me drink death’s poison

~Blinded Reveries~

Angel wings beat softly against my weary face,
As I take flight in night's thundering weaving
Pour starlight onto this skin caught in blackened lace,
And let me dance with this life I've been grieving

Trumpets sing lowly to gliding spirits that call
With howling breaths of mindless endeavor
Let them thrust me toward the lingering wall
Of this stifling mercy that, in fear, I shall not sever

Soaring with this blanketed soul of withering ashes,
I can live amongst invisible sprites
Without fear of a body that crumbles and thrashes
In this, I can vanish within isolation's piercing lights

Still, the dream melts in silver mercury streams
As reality pulls open these tearstained eyes
Willow branches curl, engulfed with the wind's feeble screams,
My fingers tracing over engravings of death and lies

Life is but a fading shadow of masked speech,
Fleeing from the darkness of truth
As escape becomes the release I cannot reach,
Sinking into the murky fetters of blinding youth.