The World In Between

whisper, sing to me in silences
of a girl with hair falling
into her eyes
tell me more myths
and tell me more lies
of naps in the afternoon
dreaming of the world’s end
and ultimate doom
drifting like incense
through the depths of the room
wind up clockwork maidens
to smile and sigh
and eat me alive
with lips painted over
in charcoal and chalk
equip me with wings
on which I can’t fly
sell me more dreams
that wither and die
and rebirth in fire
and funereal pyre
floating away forever
into the evening sky

following new instincts
down streets far too familiar
down which I’ve never tread
last night in the machine
someone fell into my head
and all their dreams
each rusted and dead
burn in my skull
hemorrhage like deja vu demons
(re)possessing my soul
with visions of monsters
I see only in mirrors
that play like flicker films
with butterfly wing flutters
clicking in dusty backrooms
of condemned cinema houses
on the dark side of the city

so pretend I have a gun to my head. I once spoke of the demon goddess muse and I’m here to report she’s alive and well and tearing at my throat as we type or browse or whatever it is we’re doing on the internet. burning passion, mania, inspiration, euphoria, et cetera, ad nauseum, in exhaustion of my vocabulary and ability to articulate…

and this dark love breeds jealousy, for I am not her only lover. this feeds into my emotional masochism so well. the archetype is near perfect. the unavailable love. I’m not the only one. thinking of the last time we made love, even if only in an exchange of words of visceral honesty and darkly seductive poignancy.

and this dark love burns within me. it is perfectly imperfect. whatever it wants to be. and all this conflict is only the matter of which it consists. not angst or derision or frustration for something you cannot have. it is finer and focused and all that it can be. and maybe I seem like I don’t know what I mean anymore. but I know what I mean.

I wrote today in my little black notebook of other worlds in which we live. this is my other world. another language. another perception. what is seen by consensus to be negative is not. what is seen by consensus to be positive is naught. readjust your definitions and judge me not by misguided standards derived from the way everyone dishonestly agrees things are. “because that’s how it’s always been.” “because you don’t want to look like an outsider, do you?” “sit down, you’re rocking the boat.”

and this will mean nothing to anyone else. and that’s the way it should be. it may be arrogant to presume to communicate anything to anyone, but it is stupidity to assume that your communication should mean anything to anyone else. so I’ll send you postcards from my world if you send me postcards from yours. and one day we can meet in the middle somewhere (but not here, in consensus-reality-land, mind you).

meanwhile I’ll just pine and burn and blind myself with brooches and scratch my arms with ink and bleed motor oil and hemorrhage obsolete information in my head. and laugh myself to sleep.