murder / suicide

there are flowers, as under the sun
there are stars, as under the dark
there are eyes, as under sleep—under death.
you hold me as if all these are true. but I
(some gentle excoriation)
(some sticky exudate
between bruised, perforated cells)
do not deserve this.
I sold my truth for survival. my insanity for
sanity. I do not deserve
your pity
you who have a dove inside your skin
a pallor sweeter than death:
bones
dull, white, to-be-yellowed things.
we do not scratch we do not scrabble
like the living trapped in coffins, dumb animals
locked in cages, addicts clawing off their
skins
grandiloquent
nectar
glass-red wires
electric blood
sparks bitter as cyanide on our tongues
when I kiss you, beloved,
till death do us part
so I shall kill you
& you me, a simple agreement,
a contract
argentine as the blade of a knife
at a moonlit throat.
come, now: authenticity
is a privilege for those who do not
fear, or do not fear to fear. I, coward,
blasphemer, have long since fled
from myself as men flee from hurricanes—
can you blame me? it was that or be
ripped apart
by my own stupid, starving, rending fingers
as wailing widows rend their hair,
as were-beasts rend their own flesh
that was once human.
some ugly, throbbing mass of a thing
a placenta ejected wet & fleshy, heavy
with a life, a sentience of its own. all the
grotesque little twitches
of a brain, a body mid-seizure.
they talked about electrocuting me.
(as treatment, not torture.
torture-treatment.) they said
the sizzle
the awful burning
gash soul-deep
the wracking judder
the white, nuclear implosion
would stay in my brain,
nary a mark of it
elsewhere, save my shuddering
limbs. they’d
electroshock me like they do to people
on death row, but they’d stop
before I died. (& then they expected
me to be reborn.
ridiculous. gotta kill me first.)
they said they’d
tie me down, put padding between my jaws
so I wouldn’t bite my tongue off.
(good riddance, frankly. like Caliban,
my speech has
brought me nothing.)
they said they’d do this to me. said it
while I hung from the ceiling,
noose pulling sharp under my chin
wondering why I let his hands on me
if I could let my hands on someone
to murder them or just the reflection
of myself in their eyes. do dead eyes
still reflect their killers, or do they go
opaque
stages with the curtains closed?
I scrounge here in the marrow-warm gutters
akin to vermin; I am vermin, a rodent
dwelling in your stomach, claws gouging
the soft, slick silk of your gut
teeth consuming you
from the inside out. your organs
red & shiny as pomegranate seeds
between my worrying fangs, all of you
grist to the mill of me.
you & your small smiles
not small from shyness but from
hunger, underfed as children
of droughts & famines are, I the blight
upon your fields, my rake
in your grasses, fingers in your
hair, nails at the corner
of your mouth forcing it open
for the pills:
eleven turns down the furrows
of the earth
turning your soil
planting my madness in you
saliva & blood
drooling mouth & lolling tongue
excess & excretion
the hot stink of dead things
left out in the sun too long.
devil that I am, I will crouch
on your shoulder
or behind your spleen, anywhere
you’ll have me, a nest of wasps
beneath your ribs, in your lungs
your softest tissue
lined with stings
tender, red, inflamed
pornographic
pink-pricked & pus-glossy
around the puncture points.
they’ll leave you alone
(I’ll leave you alone)
I promise, just a bit more hurt
before you rest. I too will rest
within you, a parasite
in its host, a larva
in its pupa. helping, not hurting:
erasing you. erasing me. you will
become me & I you, merging,
liquefying our organs
as all chitinous beings do
until our flesh is the same.
the husk & the pit, the disease
& the germ. tooth
& nail. the tooth
shatters, as does
the nail, the will:
only the shattering
remains.