Midnight Undressed //

only trust mother

as she passes in a grain of sand

and fleck of moonlight spilling through our fingertips

into a thousand blessings of warmth amid winter's wanton viscosity



she is made of butterflies, and dragons,

angel wings

slowly vanishing into her own recipe

of corrosive, sweetened evil



beckoning

the spider's incantation to spill from between my lips

twist and contort the steel and silk

strings for dark marionettes

to manipulate you



into the perfect girl



slip headfirst into death

just like a favorite dress



know, the game we play in life is lost

and the consequence is a thick, black liquid substance

crude oil

filling your lungs, your eyes, ears

and mouth

until the truth becomes a foul taste

and condolences hollow, handed freely to the masses

in place their daily bread

they've been filled to the brim

with impotent gestures encased in pretty pockets of

air



the stomach always turning cogs of reason

into something

anything



to flee the night's raging tempest

pounding and grinding skulls into the concrete

shrieking, screaming, and battering against some flimsy hope

scantily clad and emaciated,

labeled 'faith'



'there is nothing here

for you.

no one here

for you.

you are all alone.'



to be murdered softly, slowly

by the inches



our tormentor

indifferent to age's brutal cruelty

unnoticing of the victim's corpse rotting

its way back home

into the earth



we are orphaned and offered up

into the night

in sacrifice

to



a vacancy large enough for one hundred million

man-made-gods

to live comfortably and somewhere still

out there

one wanders keeping our secrets safe

from us



we are unclaimed

wasted

what little worth we may have unraveling

before our very eyes

like cheap fabric

in the mirrors of the mind



a wisp of black smoke

acrid

and already

beginning to evaporate



a fate shared by all known things

amid these gargantuan halls

of universal secrecy

with frowns locked and written in the stars

we are blinded by the fire and ruined by the storm

before we touch our hearts desire

and etch it into form



yet still we cling to these forbidden sheets

of darkness

under the birthright of this

lonely star

wrapped around our throat

tighter and tighter

panic reigns, is running wild

seeking annihilation of resolve



as anger, fear,

our questions, and confusions

rattle off into the heavens like falling rocks

over a cliff



only to return

to us



not in the form of an echo,

but folded neatly

in an envelope

which reads:



'no such address.'