you can
no sooner read this
than the ripples
in a pool of crimson
on a white
marble floor
you can
not experience this
flurry of razors
carnivorous
butterflies
chewing through
your cramping guts

no
this is nothing
your mind
can hope to
truly comprehend
just words
haphazardly scattered across
electrons with
better things to do

you can
not crawl inside
my cavernous skull
pluck metaphors from
overladen branches
let the juices
run down your chin
as you savor
each morsel of
sun ripened
insurmountable woe

if there were
any true justice in
this farce
you’d get a
papercut
as you dejectedly
flip the pages
of scabs where
a fool cut himself
for your
flawed entertainment
see every
inconsistency
in this clarity reserved
for the dying embers
in an ashen heart

this isn’t for your
needless consumption
this isn’t a poem
nor a cry for help
it is an epitaph
stamped in granite
a ripple growing
on a placid sea of blood
staining a marble floor
as the caterpillars
writhe in cocoons
gluttonous beasts
in a state of
perpetual longing

poetry is
an ink stain passed
from soul
to dilated pupil
a quiver
a tolling
in your heartbeat
as the silence
smothers the day
a plastic bag
wrapped lovingly
around your soul
as your lips turn blue
the light
fades away

when oppenheimer
became death
it was easy
he never had to pull
the lever
didn’t have to watch
as people turned
to shadows
i have to kill
the best parts of myself
on an endless loop
over and over and over again
all while fully
cognizant of the pain

you would
never understand
yet here we sit
unable to make
eye contact
having shared the
gift of pain
irrevocably changed
yet exactly
as we were before