Tiers

A collaboration with Yellow Sweater and my brother :)
~~~

“LET THEM EAT CAKE!” 

curse the sweet toothed aristocrats
with the ebb and flow of revolutions,

butterflies on one final sugar high. 

.

but surfers don’t watch waves, they breathe them.

I wonder if frequency is measured in Hertz because 
of the gongs that are smashed when the
universe collapses to the decimal point 

we connect the dots, 
undulating by a trigonometric pendulum:
steel, and steam, and stars.  

in a sterile classroom brimming with
corpses, kids who are dead before they’ve known
how to live.

we dance in painful convection currents--
Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-seven

oh Abel,
the blood of martyrs is sickly sweet. 
like roses, and rosaries, and roadside memorials. 

I wonder how the heat burns out,
thick breaths, empty lungs,
the terrible sadness of meaningless passion.

all our matches, snuffed out.

our windows closed, 
suffocating in domesticated darkness. 
slip on the wheel that just keeps running, 
a careless genesis with each new pot. 

our world is thrumming under the restless fingers of a hobbyist; 
scraps of clay made into something ugly.

.  

I would like to wash my veins with kryptonite, 
a naked goddess
who desires nothing but freedom. 

the ivy on her brow pulses with seablood
and the damsel in distress wrings her hair 
till she is nothing but lustrous. 

the rain falls into the river. 

Sunday morning--
doilies line my mouth and I choke
on rose petals in my vodka.

I have evolved to grab handfuls
of breath mints, not to eat 
but to relive that first gluttonous moment of glee

I keep my orange peels, 
and my wrapping paper, 
and my little moments that smell like soap.

in the shower,
I will sing drunken hymns to Macy's gift registers. 
I will wed my own fancy, and there will be cake.