My tongue crisps

as your delicate snakeskin

stares me down,

tearing my corneas,

smiling like granite.

x

I turn to you, gorgon, and wave,

as arduously as any sapient emblem,

harboring no belief

or pride.

We hemorrhage emptily

though our swift tides.

And now in repose,

starched and smoking,

the fumes animating

atheistic lungs.

x

My paper crown burns.

The months attune.

A potent solstice,

simmering in my image.

Aging embryos bloom in sepia.

You are the idol.

Well, I am the concrete.

x

I contort proportionately,

the cringe of early December.

The freshly scorched chimneys

dancetheir elegant heaving.

It manifests more woman

than I can conceive.

This accusation clings more determinedly

than any truth

and certainly surpasses any mother.

Courage waits less calmly than ever

and thins my skin like wool.

A gleaming scorpion

huddled in the stars,

reassembling like mosaics

when the planets clash.

x

Do you think me idle?

No, I strategize in the quiet.

Waiting for a hook

to tease you from my abyss,

to prick the lust from corrupt ventricles.

x

Sequences of numbers

transcend me like light,

they leave no bone eroded,

no life arthritic.

x

I focus myself on a hitch.

I take it and stay there.

Then the timeline shifts

in submissive response.

Pyramids collapse

as they wait for the spark.