beggars opera (with JohnFeddeler)

when you live on the streets, how do you shelter yourself
from the rain that pierces like syringes, the wind that
howls like a banshee. how do you silence the screams
born from hours of shock treatment, administered by
heartless specters in white gowns & surgical masks,
when the screams are inside your head…

I walk proudly among the lepers, hideous & forgotten. I
find my treasures in garbage heaps & the pockets of the
uncaring prosperous. my only adornments are a scepter,
gnarled & splintered, & a crown made of tin.

my people are cutthroats & thieves. they are beggars, &
I am their king. dance for me.

Don't you look away from me. Don't you recognize that which
I have only just begun to scar in phosphorescent memory.
I feel so heavy. But I've been clinging to the dynamics of
empty weather & I'm floating in this moment.
I can almost see the static leaded down my spine
breeding across the apex of my shoulder blades
& injecting tedium into the under base of my skin.

I dance vestals through the veil, alive & embedded. I wait
for the shadows to stalk me, call to me & force the center
of this eulogy to a surface I never cared to clean. I collect
aluminum smiles dragged across a free sky, worthless
to the ascended & unnecessary for the fallen.

My kingdom is sewed of stains & twisted omissions.
It's built atop of decaying peripherals & I am it's queen. Kneel for me.