phantasmagoria // prince tulip of darkwing

so i become a portrait of many organs,
a thousand roots and buckets
gathering all the water, nutrients,
no muddy flowers,

vascular,

wandering the streets at night,
sleepsick, lo-fi indie tides
and a forest white and porous,

i breathe into this and

it breathes into me.


*


black wolf
creeps behind the ribs,
above the guts,
and from its mouth crawls
another wolf,
and that wolf's fur births a flock of birds,

call it the feral loop,
throat raked by teeth and burned by soup,
eldritch dots flying off into puffed cuffs
of gray, ebb of smoke to veil
the end of days.


*


wading in and out of
sickly light, a dustmite
drenched, bachata hums
in a purple fog thereafter,

these realms like limbo,
cogs triturating,

phantasmagoria...

yes!
these sweet, dread dreams

and stirring, bitter howls of wind,
my eyes so dry, my frame
wilting slow in dark screen,
blue beams coda,

i take a bow and
ghosts clap
for me in silence,

the scene is mute, painless,
leaps, bounds away from
the months i've spent
pin-pricked, stuck on
a rotisserie stick,
gyrating, moaning
deep in seventh circle—

every castigated memory of you.



//



a prince with crumpled petals in his pockets

returning to a secret garden--broken thing

with broken wings and broken beak

becomes a portrait of many organs.

little, beady eyes watch from

the shadows as a tulip blooms.

/

/

/

black-winged desperado
flying off into the night—
crown royal breaths.

fractured voices ringing—
echoes chopped and screwed
within their braincase.
/
\
he can feel her energy
from two planets away.