the liquid glows an eerie spaceship blue in the dirty hatbox vial
his savior, his muse, he caresses it through the glass like a lover
the swimming fly-specked light bulb casts giggling shadows on the poem-scrawled wall
a thousand ghostly little girls tittering at his deluded, smudgy words,
their faces pale and smiling, floating on the nexus side of the cracked swinging mirror,
pointing little scarred fingers with broken nails at the misconstrued rhymes
a pile of stained needles patiently waltzes beneath the black-painted windowpane
screaming for selection and self-pride to escape the squallid hell
a bead of blackened, diluted blood breaks free and joins the constellations on the smeared tile
winningly complementing his overgrown lank mane of lion's hair
and as the electric sunshine blue flows into his veins
the little girls come out to play again
and pull him up and into their wonderland of bones and dust,
dancing and swallowing his dreams.