My palms are damp,
pencil convulsing,
skinny, blue fingers scratching pustules,

blood weeping from pores by the hour,
          by the hour that flees each minute.

We all were told fallacies, we all were once reassured
with the fine powder of false inspiration
          that whirls in Darwinian gusts,

and so I’ve taught myself to hide
within chipped white walls
and a testing booklet
while Dawn and Dusk alternate,
          melding together psychedelic patterns
          of rainbow bands,
                 of colors I only used to see.

We all were exposed only to specious boughs
in the shady wood,
each laden with gifts of silvery shimmer
from clouds above
but infested deep down
          with venom and hornets’ nests,
          with a poisonous heart
          keen on slaughter.

I will forever keep the door closed
to the urban flowerbed I once loved,
to the soil lush on top with roses and hydrangeas
          and chances,

flower petals slipping gracefully in vernal zephyrs,
carried by the winnowing hush of new air,
          of new life.

Time pounds on the door
          of cobwebs and gray hairs,
and petals are reduced to ribbons;

they shrink, they soften,
they probe the walls of prosperous olive-grass blades
with their gentle wrinkles,
          each one a jagged runnel of age
                  and sagacity.

They slide down grass edges
          through silt crust and hot mantle,

then through pores in Her blistering core
into the uncharted home of bombshells—
the skeletons rising on an insidious conveyor belt,
soon to reach Earth’s surface.

I witnessed Life
but only on Her illusive natural face (for I’m not a petal)
as She suckled the privileged behind closed doors
with promises, gifts and joy
but discarded most others into my city’s sewer
for an existence unheeded.

Born under a lucky star,
few can lower themselves into the raging freshet
that rushes from endeavors and fortune past
into the open sea,
overrun with sharks, piranhas and decaying souls—
into the sea that regurgitates the land-dwellers
but gives the water-breathers a second chance.

If only I had quit the labor
before I began folding my melting heart
in the mildewed ridges of drowned sheets,
my esophagus moist with alcohol,
gashed fingertips clasping forevermore on the
brown-and-white cylinder, my true God,
          who spits cinders into my mind
as I shred my epidermis
into microscopic slivers
        that go unseen
                 forever.