sensitivity

All this change,
It is new and unfettered.
It is the crashing of a wave,
The slow shake of the sand on the beach. 


Don’t you want to know details?
It isn't surgery for the soul. 

I opened up from the neck down,
My torso cracked apart like a dead cow.
They want my meat still.

You could take out my heart, 

Dissect it.
Tweezers couldn't make it in those cracks; 

They would catch up,
Jarred so deep on a break in routine.

They say you only get beautiful

After the biggest of tragedies; 

The sorrow in your eyes catches on film,
And those cameras,
They soak up your misery like a dirty rag.

That’s the only use for all these trash magazines, 

They mop up the blood when you get too obscene.
And now, what can you even be?
Nothing more than a vintage Polaroid
Quaint as the time from which it came
When there was time to shake it out
And lay us down to dry.
Well, that time has passed.

I must preen my ruffled, bejeweled feathers
Sitting on my throne of demands
Perched as stately as a peacock
Humoring you
And your fucking complaints -
They grate on my skin like dirty nails
And you can't catch your hooks in me for long
Since I distract too easily.

Just like the polaroids,
The sunlight catches on your sin

And all those little points sprinkle over my skin
Like gunshot wounds,
About seventy of them. 

I’m open like a watering can
So pour my blood over all your lilies -
I’m sure they would appreciate my honesty.
Shoot a hole through all of my neat photography.

But not everyone can be like me.
All saintly and frayed at the edges,
Makes me think of your coat;
It’s been eaten away by imaginary fangs
And sometimes I wish you had some bite in you
But as I peek around your sides like a little child,
It yields nothing.
All I see around your arms and legs are chains.

God keeps you and your alcoholism with him for eternity.
He breaks you from your soul outwards

And damn if you'll ever know what he's going to do. 

You aren’t an angel and you shouldn’t attempt to flatter yourself.
With your head gasping in the clouds
And your feet sinking into hell,
All you can do is scream
For eternity.

You put me in a coma. 

I wish for the IV to erase any trace
Of you tearing through my veins.
I want to wake up and feel the blood sluggishly pump,
And hear the rhythm beat a tattoo inside my ears.

I am strung out,
Purple and black and blue,
And it’s true;
You can't even revive a soldier.
I’m a (soul)dier of love.
With my nails digging into my wrists, 

And my heart in my head, 

I think we’re starting to think on the same patterns.
So this is what it’s like to love rationally.

This is a spiritual meditation,
An exact question about anticipation,
A series of signals misinterpreted
Then reinstated like a political official.
We are creatures of habitual formality,
Preying on the institutions of nerve endings.

I am most sensitive at the fingertips,
Closing my eyes and feeling my way along
Your neck, spine and the inside of your soul.
I don’t have to remind you that I’m still
Watering your lilies,
Feeding you some sort of truth,
Wasting this time among the living,
When I could be passing through.
But for tonight,
My malleable body spells out the truth
In the nest of your cotton sheets,
Praying for midsummer like a martyr.