Night hangs from a rusty nail in my room
Marionettes swing like ragamuffin suicides
from the rafters, a puppet show
for the perverts gathered like worn elastic
on unwashed underwear beneath my bed
Mirrors capture mirrors reflect mirrors
Obliterating my sense that I might very well
exist in the space between painted glass
and the hacking cough of the plague victim
who recites Shakespeare in my closet
A ghoulish used-care salesman slathers
mortar between the bricks that multiply
Forming a wall where the light used to
stream through my window and illuminate
the sharp edges of shadows that stretch
and dance around the candle flames
that lick and drip my rib cage like a cell
Imprisoning my drubbing heart in bone bars
and rivers of pumped polluted blood
squeezed from the sweet flesh of naked
peeled fruit pitched like protest at the
shameful naked oil paintings that hang
Like innocent men from the branches of
Outraged birch wood trees and vignettes
of victims screaming for vulgar justice
In a forest haunted by dark side tourists
and chocolate rim jobs betraying a bad
aftertaste and another interview where
the cameras have all stopped rolling down
the mountain that no one managed to climb
despite the mouths and lungs and voices
that egged them on to triumph and
debauchery once all the dreams were
downloaded and the cavalcade of protesters
descended the stairway and announced
that they were right and they would
prove it to the naysayers and disbelievers
And so, the mouth in the wall’s lips curled
back to reveal a fetid sneer, and it spoke to me:
“Sobriety is a prison.
Yours is a life sentence without parole.
So, take heed,
you have used up all your lifelines.
There will be no more chances.
Your redemption is compulsory.
It is non-negotiable.”
“Alcohol is cyanide.
You are addicted to suicide.
All the eyes in this house of moles
are dry.”
