If I decide to untangle our fingers
from this maze we created
I may just further this paradox.
We stare so long and so hard
we start seeing one eye -
and this is just the brain cackling
at our confusion that continues to lie
telling us we are aliens,
we are green and scaly and we bite
like rabid beasts, we hurt.

If I banish my thoughts
into plasma, into cores
then they’ll start seeing me
like I tried to see them. As
if they were real and not just
unknowns walking among
us.  They might start feeling
too much and I couldn’t
take a whole army of me
waking up anxious
and forgetting where they
put their shoes. 

If I go back to sleep
I’ll miss another day
where babies are born and
old men are shoveled into
dirt.  The worms get more food
than I do sleeping.  I’ll flatten my
pillows and stain them red.  It’ll
look like a crime scene but really
it’ll just be evidence of excess
energy seeping out of my
head. I think I killed another
man but I should have just
killed myself instead.

If I try harder
I’ll become a fuse and
explode all over you.
It’s just ashes burned too
black, blooming inside
our noses.  We smell
terror like rotten eggs
and like bad similes.  we
wonder how people die
or why they write so much of
it when nobody has ever come back.
we don’t understand how an opening
door means there’s a ghost but
we tell them we do.

If I try to get back to you
I just might rot straight through.
It’s too soon and my brain
is psychotic but then again
so are you.