Carefully, carefully, carefully you step-

 

The lines drawn without embellishment or

 

The possibility of such an accompaniment

 

A room filled with absence and the

 

Sense that suffocation is possible-

 

Is in fact likely-

 

 

 

Spiraling thoughts- things better left unsaid,

 

Unheard- a scream is really only the anthem to a country of solitude

 

Of isolation where colors are so vivid, dissimilar, and devastating

 

That mixed they cancel out and

 

Stretch themselves into angry, sullen figures that stalk tangibles far after the

 

Moon, pale and sweating with anticipation, smiles and mounts the dark stage

 

 

 

Whispers collapse and shoot down streaming banners of phony reassurance

 

You are a magnet snatching fragments of architecture as you pass them and

 

Inhabitants of the downward spiral- the ones staring and bearing what you assume

 

What you guess knowledgably- what you know-

 

Are teeth, rotting and jagged and you wonder

 

How much damage the world could inflict if each organism held a sword to the sky

 

 

 

Stillness splinters off into thin pointed rods-

 

Glaring to induce a tremulous dance which

 

Staring, your skeleton learns and reluctantly steps to

 

In a neon ballroom smeared with spasms masquerding as oriental rugs

 

Thrown haphazardly to cover den openings carved to contain the creature

 

Screaming and tossing its dense matted mane under the weak floorboards

 

 

 

Realizing that the end is close-

 

Close enough to smell like a bruised orange hung just above the vision line

 

Close enough to feel, like ambling briskly through arches of shocks meant to prepare

 

Meant to scare

 

Until the climax has no option but to halt the illusion of function altogether

 

And twist the well-worked wires of the panic apparatus

 

 

 

The itch is deeper than you comprehend; an explosion is peeking from the vase of possibilities

 

Scratching is nearly an unconscious deed and blood is flowing, flowing, flowing-

 

Leaving a sluggish trail-

 

Snails of death and delight and thrill, but above all fear

 

 

 

These emotions cease in the end, are shot down one by one all of them on the spot

 

You peer from behind thick sheets as they utter their last prayers,

 

Asking forgiveness you will never deny