Forest boughs stretched over my head
Shield to heaven’s surveillance
Unshielded, my feet slipped into familiar, cloven treads
Probing each smooth hollow
I found promise in the path
Sulfur fingers, in pungent evanescence, drew me onward
Toward the Morning Star
Where red firelight flickered
Dancing shadow trees wove welcome
Arching lithe backs over the mouth they bade me enter
I knelt at the maw, and touched forehead to cold stone
Within, The Dragon prowled
Seeking one to devour
And I entered
Roaring, his chorus, a serenade, a command
He Is
Tenebrifer
H
S
T
N
I ran through his shadows
The echo from his chambers a beating drum
Fire brightened, I stopped at his cavern
I stepped into his snare
Red flesh glistening
Seven heads for seven pleasures
Twin flames flickering in each
Through the smoke ten horns stood virile
I rode the dragon
Seven crowns
For seven triumphs

Please explain
Is this a heart that takes love for granted 
As guaranteed or
A heart aloof
Puffed up and floating high
Like a hot air balloon 
Unreachable
Perhaps a heart assured that love
Does not exist 
The brain’s reaction to a chemical 
Cocktail
Lust with a chaser
A phantom dissipating in the dawn light
And if an arrogant heart be misfortune 
Can one kill it?

Painting Pierrot's tear on my cheek
Carving “killing myself so you don’t have to”
On my thigh
Jumping from the roof
Forgetting the rose between my teeth

I love myself
My head full of beetles
The dark circles under my eyes
Cynicism and mistrust
Like leeches on my brain
My mates
The claws that itch inside my finger tips
I love myself
The mimicry 
Mockery
Maladaption 
A death wish
That won’t come true
I love myself
My hunger
For pointless things
The ravenous hook
Grin
Infectious laugh
Mouthful of destruction 
Heartful of ticks
I love myself

I keep seeing my dead face
Like a corpse-gorged gopher 
It pops up to stare at my mind
Carrara complexioned
And I think
No
This is too smooth
I want to be  
Ripped to pieces

Kill me meat
Eat and eat
Cut slice
Feel that one 
Kind of pain
Avoid the other
Lever down
Brain off
Electricity nil and null
Body absorbs
Arches
Feel that one

Behind you, 
Fear
Before you,
Bad decisions-
Head up
Walk on
Your crooked path

The thing was crying all night
Wailing for its supper
Wailing to be held 
Wailing to be alive again
Comfort is not the domain of the dead 
Peace is not the domain of the living
Twin miseries, it crying, me listening 
Neither able to rest

No wolves in suburbia
Yet the howling persists
High and strained
Soaring over the hustle
A pause
In every household 
Jugs of milk held above cups
Eyes glance up from papers
A wordless message twisting in their guts
Spines compressed
Shawls wrapped ‘round
Something
Is neigh

Autopsy results showed
Indentations on the cranial interior
Sharp force injuries were also present
On the posterior costae
Numbers 4-7
Left and right sides
Organs were...
Shredded
Contusions too numerous
To catalogue, but covering torso
Prior to death, decedent
Complained of screams
Coming from her chest
And pounding in her head

Screams
Distant and muffled
From a room 
A time
Nonexistent
Screams
Emanating from no mouth
Yet
You feel them
Shrill reverberations
Skittering up your spine
Nesting under your scalp
Screams
That never leave you

There were, on the day in question, no less than five instances of doors that did not exist slamming and shaking the very foundations. Mr. Hopper and I had contrived to prevent the actual doors, the physical doors we could account for, from slamming by putting heavy furniture in the doorways to block them from closing. Yet still we heard it, the spectral doors, slamming, slamming, slamming, what seemed to be all day. It was most unsettling at the time, before we knew… but when we found the spectral doors? Well I can assure you, we were horrified.

“It’s running again.”
“Where do you suppose it goes?”
“Where it comes from is what I worry about.”

Agnes stood in the kitchen, watching a bottle of orange juice slide untouched
across the counter. Why, she wondered, does it wander so? And, furthermore,
whence does it go? As she wondered about the wandering, a kitchen knife
took to the air, and stabbed her in the back.

Thump shivers
Nerves coffee sloshed
Thoughts 
Stopped 
Quiet a pause
Breathing again a sip
Coffee warm slides
Into belly
Thump shivers nerves
Belly aches
Thump shivers nerves
Thump shivers nerves
Thump shivers nerves
Thump
Thump
Thump
No

Fragile rattle
What is it? The window.
Four by five? Six?
Glass quivers 
Vibrates on the edge
A bullet paused in flight
Invisible hands 
Slap slap slap
The glass holds
This time

Want to do the bad thing
Want to try 
Slam fingers in doors
Kick holes in walls
Must bleed 
Create negative space
Scream forever
Want to try it
Stomach death
Windows shatter flesh
Punch faces break
Break want to break
The bad thing

Quiet
Steam rising from a tea Cup
Whiskers twitch
The flick of a turned page
Shrieking immolation
A thousand fists against the door
Walls tumbling down
Around a delicate Sip

You knocked once
Hard on the door
Inside I rippled
Dark pool of nerves
Wouldn't answer
You hit the wall
Flat palm slap
Again and again
And again
I wouldn’t answer
You aren't there
Loose energy
Is all
You are
They Say

I can hear you rot
My length along your grave
Ear against the cold, turned earth
I can hear your belly skin strain 
Thin against the gasses
Pressing to escape

I can hear you rot
Digesting yourself
Generating sticky heat 
Enough to jelly your fat
Blood thick, dammed
Collecting in collapsed veins
I can hear it pool and bruise your skin

I can hear the sucking pop 
Of your joints coming unglued
Your brain is soft and sloshy
Your fingers crack and curl

I can hear the worms
Gnawing at your eyes
Slither through your nose
Bugs crawl on me too, while I
Listen to them eating you
I’m letting them eat me, too

Broken promise
Broken skin
Within the heart
The rush of love
Without the heart
The rush of blood

Captive of the scythe 
Reaped but never sewn
Loves lies pallid, bleeding
Upon the weathered stone

Roses are red
Your lips are blue
Garrote is a French word*
For I strangled you

Red soaks through your pillow
Red stains all your sheets
Red, a path to follow
Down the stairs, into the street
Red will help me find you
Though you may crawl and hide
Red and me play peekaboo
Red's always on my side

Plump flesh
Gnashed in a zipper’s 
Teeth
Meat
In a grinder

Rain Rain
Falling down
Pitter pitter patter
On the cold cold ground
Fill me up
Float me 'round
Kiss me kiss me kiss me
Until I have drowned

Let them eat cakes
And mortar
Bite
BOOM!
Gleaming shards of
Teeth embedded in brain

Let them feast on
Flash paper, glut
Black powder
BOOM!
Leaky guts, dripping refuse

May Roman candles blast
Their eyes, unseeing
Landed on a candy wrapper
BOOM!
Pure white chunks 
Glory of blue iris

Glory take, then,
Their fingers 
BANG!
Cherry bomb blackened
Gaping void
Where red meat should be

At the hospital, they can sew you lobster claws. 

The serpent flicked its 
Blistered tongue
Wracked and cracked its coils
Pus oozed from underneath lifted scales
Blood pulsed behind a blind 
Third eye

Eve coughed

Pounded on her chest
Spat onto Eden’s
Ash choked ground
	
“So you’re telling me
If I eat this apple
I’ll learn how to fix all this?”
	
The serpent opened its mouth
Blood dripped from its toothless gums
“Yessth,” it lisped
Eve plucked the apple
Atrophied fingers sunk into rotten 
Grainy flesh
Sour mush engulfed her few
Remaining teeth

The serpent heaved a sigh

Eve fell to her knees

Poison leaked from milky 
Cataract eyes

The serpent watched her last breath
Bubble up
Between her lips

Axehead sharpened
Glinting high
Falling fast
And severing thigh
Sigh through flesh
And scream through meat
Into bone
Steady blade, finding home

Can you hear my heart beat?
It’s beating just for you.
Can you hear my lungs heave?
Bet you can’t, I’m turning blue.
Can you see my eyes cloud
With dreams that went unseen?
Do you hold my bloody shroud
With hands henceforth unclean?
When you put me in the coffin
Will you deem your torment through?
And will you curse me often
When my memory haunts you?
I’ll make sure you don’t forget me
Or the pulsing veins you severed.
And if a new love you should marry
To my specter she’ll be tethered.

The black cat never crossed my path
I saw her licking her whiskers
Clean of blood
Perched on a fence
Bleeding into the night 
Her accomplice

“I’m hungry.” I told the cat
Midnight malleable
Flicked her tail against the slats
Hypnotic, my sycophantic heart
Pumped to her rhythm

The black cat leapt from the fence
Whisper footed 
Secrets disappearing under every paw
Fall

She kept those secrets behind a dumpster
Loafers splayed to the sky, involuntary
Wriggling, her head
Buried in some unfortunate’s
Chest cavity

The black cat ripped  
Heart from its moorings
Lifted her head, sleek fur dripping
Blood from ear tip to chin
Tail flicking

I crawled on hands and knees
Hunger keeping me alive

The corpse was open
A flower in bloom
Its fragrance a transaction

I dipped my cupped
Hands into the hollowed 
Corpse and pulled them back
Brimming with blood
My lips trembled at the scent
Metallic
Crossing the barrier, thick and warm
I vibrated with pleasure

The feast’s head was covered 
By a silken shirt scrap, the black cat 
Slinked around
Hooking the tatter by a claw
Pulling it away

A familiar face
Stirring nothing

My heart only screams
There are many ways to write
A scream, but I write it in blood
Before the moon sets

I write it in cups of tea
Cradled in shaking hands
I write it with a bitten tongue

I write crimson tension 
Cancerous anxiety 
While my body aches

I write screams while wishing you dead
With a pen, but with a knife too

In gin binges and pills
I write what my heart screams

Tangled in sheets 
At dreamland’s line
My song has split you
Demonic, devine, detritus 
At breathing soft
At heartbeat quickened
Upon the edge 
A trill
A treble 
Your moan at last
My longed for sigil
From underneath
I’m hither creeping
Singing
Always singing

The Burned Maidens

I saw that they had fire
And it burned like a tainted star
They knelt before its yellow light
Shoving offerings into the fumes
They prayed

Give us gold
Give us youth
Give us life forever 

The flame kissed their hands
Burning her love into their flesh
Blistering devotion bubbled
Beneath their skin
Still they prayed

Give us gold
Give us youth
Give us life forever

The flame kissed their faces
Expanding the skin 
Fluid eruption
Running down their cheeks
Lips curled from their teeth
Eyelids fused shut
Still they prayed

Give us gold
Give us youth
Give us life forever

When the fire burned down
Scavengers came and ate the meat
Time turned charred bones
To dust
Yellow daisies grow there now
Swaying in the breeze
Turning their heads to the sun

All Witches Burn

They’ve lit the fire beneath me
Heat and flames rush to supper
My flesh and fat, boons
Feed these rabid, ravenous beasts

My body erupts
I peel and flake
Rubbed off
As birch bark is
Thin, opaque slivers of crisp
Skin 

Before long the damage will deepen
Thicker layers of flesh
Split
Give way to bubbling fat 
Expanding under pressure

I’ll be a candle
Tallow dripping
A grim taper in the dark crypt
Of humanity

My throat is closing
I gasp
A reflexive will to live, though
I would like to cease

Cooking inside my ribcage
Stalwart, my heart pumps boiling blood
Through lungs lifting 
With hot air

I am meat, a meal for hungry eyes
Bellies rumbling with appetite 
Mouths water with the scent of my suffering

My end comes with a curse
On a final, ashen exhale

I weave and you watch
My web a constellation
Your watching an acceptance
Wanting to be caught
Waiting to be devoured

You thought it into existence 
It was graphite,
Not synapse 
Till it ripped itself 
From the paper
Leg 
By 
Leg
Eight
Legs
Skitter
Towards the hand that made them

Hanging over your head
Eight legs, twitching
Sharp chelicerae 
Snap shut
Fangs drip with venom
Hunger gets
Closer

Fangs and diamonds
Silhouetted against
A gray sky
Waiting always
Waiting

She spun her web
Across the moon 
Hourglass and eight
How long will her descent 
Take?
Can she stand the emptiness
Of space?

We called her 
Spider Gut
The girl
Toothless, she opened
Her dark mouth
Wide
Legs probing inside
Entering
Down
Living in her belly

Though the man
Loved her
She knew 
He could
Never be with her
He was too delicious 
Not to eat

Water dripped off long
Legs
Drip drip drip
I heard each drop
And the sound of jaws
Clacking together 
As she descended

See my pretty 
Round and fat
Pretty sees you back

Rain washed away 
Our sorrow
Soaked the 
Sallow soil
Children play 
On fallowed ground
So we weep
And still it rains

Through the rain sheeted window, satined with steam, she watched him approach. Step by laborious step. He was not of this world. Not of this gravity.

Each rain drop took a particle
A tiny piece of her
Carrying it away
Down the gutter

Cruel shadows
Reached across the windows
Black and aimless
Figures of terror
Driven by the wind

Pupped in a hollow
A witch’s teat for his comfort
The devil bathed Black Shuck
In ashes
Put brimstone in his eyes

Whispered:

Find the holy places 
Where hatred
Seethes
Where candles are lit
For your destruction
And God Himself
Wants you dead

Make them fear you 

Clamp your jaws
Around their pious domes
Tear their heads
Off their necks
Listen, Shuck, to the rip
And pop of ruined flesh
And broken bone
Open veins
Drink the thick blood

Bring to me the hearts
Of our enemies

We will feast on the 
Sweat meat
My Hell-bred beast

Go, Shuck!

Go!