Blunt.
Burnt out.
Seizured and blackened by years of futile excess.
Unquestioned, roaring, fetid laughter
Exposing vile indifference to virility.
Or is it the mark
Of the broken? The hooks
And barbs of gleaming brass,
And the swells of ill-chosen
Crimson tapestry.
Faded, it too worn down
And hopeless, beneath the boots of the forgotten.
They swim daily in poisons and ales,
The yellowing stem bores
Deep and merciless past the flickering nerves, clinging.
The pulp,
Soft, rotten fragility.
The soul of a tiny ivory goddess.
Unacknowledged, or abandoned.
All in a line, they leer, flames extinguished.
A mockery, blasé.
My fingertips score on the wire,
The blood dissipates to the carpet,
And I swim with them. Backstroke.
For a price I never asked.
