A Canto on Addiction

Just a little something I wrote for a Shea movie. But I thought I'd post it case ya'll wanted to check it out too. The form is a little messed up cause of gay blogger.

The Art of Tourniquets

A song plays like a snake, slipping in and out of my ear, around my neck and down my
shirt. There isn’t time to pet these words. But I feel its seducing whisper a few layers of skin away from the beat. Just sleep…
Those silly Gypsy girls move their hips and I know they’re caught in the coil. A dusty
floor, sand everywhere but it’s not a beautiful desert. We threw our trash, our words and our filthy passions down hours ago. Now they’re just maggot skeletons that pretend to be memories worth remembering. December…
Another minute slides by without intent, following its brother out the window where time
goes when it’s forgotten. To a hole in the ground, then under earth that smothers and burns time to cold bodies. Who sets the clock…
I tap the plastic, run a finger over the black measurements, one line for every scar. Some
are buried and scream more cause they never told some kind of peace. I put a tourniquet on each, render hurt chants speechless and throw them into an ocean of blood and poison. They’ll squirm forever…
Come up for breath, drink another and back down again. I’m not talking drinks here but
an underwater world of chemical design. Manufactured by six handed men. Their scalpel eyes see what you need. Not men at all…
So this is where I left my dreams, at the bottom with the bottom feeders. And now
they’ve withered, food for scavengers. I can’t look when it’s that summer I was so happy now just fragments of words and flashes of the sun on a watery grave. Could I leave a lily for regret, at least could I do that? There’s no going back...
I know this is it, what I am made to be. Alone, alone like a voice of hope in a forest
falling beneath snow. I’ll wrap myself tighter in this dark room, pull the blinds,
blow out the candles, watch the TV shutter in and out of black. Just sleep…
And I dream there is a man waiting for me by the subway entrance. He isn’t homeless
but he isn’t Wall Street. He knows my name as if we’re best friends, says he can take me up town and feed a little bread into this lifeless frame. I’m not so sure, what’s the use. Well I suppose anything’s better than stale cigarettes. I notice something else. His voice is clear and free, which I’ve never been. Free that is, just a slave. I’ll go as long as these legs will take me. Boy, you’ll walk over mountains if you just stay close.