welcome to the walled hotel,
jade green and more than your immortal soul can afford
it's the place to be if you want a teen dream
to buy or sell

it's been awhile since we saw clean faces
did you know your chastity leaves something to be desired?
you remind us of a movie star, but
there is nothing beautiful here any more.

all we have are prisoners.
one with hazy eyes and empty smiles,
with wrists so thin you can't see them sideways:
dark glazed curls sheared short with her scissors rages
there is nothing in her today
she has nothing she can give you today
try again when she's not so ashamed

i don't know if we will ever understand her.
she does not eat the food of the gods,
she does not sleep but for fear of dreaming
she claws at her heart as if to cleave
it from the bird cage of her breast
and the pale flower of mothering ribs
one day she will wake up dead.

we can sell you a slave girl
we can't promise you she's a good girl
but she can give you what you want.

vines creep up the hotel walls to choke
her sacrilegious song bruises on the throat
of an ugly girl who never made it to swan.

she tastes like bruises and kerosene.
and bleeds sweet n' low saccharine.
she digs in trapped inside this heroine's solar system
of powderlit constellations that live their fiery lives.
partnerless and free to traumatize their own selves
she can't escape this star studded destination
that's driving her on.

she says I will push you to the edge.
she says I will give you what you need.
she says I will die when you are dead.
(she says I wanted to believe. I really did.)

she says she was born
to sympathize with the devil,
that the pharisees were her people and
slaughtered sodom was her city
and babylon's ashes are resting
in her pale skin.
she promises to raise semiramis again
once this apathy has finished raping
what was left of her good will.

she will blaspheme to give you redemption
rising higher still than heaven.

higher, still, than hotel walls.