"The dead rise in classic form,
Shakespearean and angry,
to touch my body."
-- Dancing Bear, The Dead
 

I tasted    your sickly,  pale psalms
for the first  time    when    I cut  my
lips    on the      porcelain language
locked      away in  your full, scarlet

mouth.    As my    tongue  carefully
probed the  sweet, stinging slit, you
drank    in my instincts, and partially
kissed  the crimson    cosmos  from
my smiling,  beaming corners. I al-

ways thought my last evening would
be like  this, that the body  was built
to    accept    every  form of  sorrow
as  long as  it  sprouted wings, and

violently  flew  in    the center  of the 
diaphragm  at a    break-neck, shoot-
ing star speed;  that you would black
hole molt,  and tickle      the back of 
throat    whenever      I tried to laugh

without  you. Tonight, I’m writing in
that same off-white, sing-song lang-
uage;  I’m  painting  my drab, dusty
room  that  same shade of sanguine

verse, and  igniting  the curtains you
perched  behind    before  you found
a way  to mimic me.  You’re  going to 
squirm  as    smoke slips passed  my
tonsils—  you’re going to thrash your

hollow  bones against  my windpipe,
regurgitating    your way around  the
swirling, burning blackness    as my
bedroom bonfire            finally snuffs
you out  of all of my rituals and rites.