Lazarus Isn't Home Right Now

I revolve, inverted. I evolve, converted. She arches her back beneath me, and cries out for mercy, I curl my fingers into her scalp and dig in, whistling a song my mother taught me. She's so fragile and temperamental, but then again don't dreams always slip between your fingers? She pries open my ribcage and fills me with poison, and lead, and fire. Where once pearls were now rubies glisten. Where once gold flew free now shadows obscure. Where once eyes sat now resoluteness holds steady.

One night to live a daydream, and poof when the morning comes again, everything will be as it always was. Poison is my only hope now, and numbness my truest friend. I find my reflection confusing. I am a spineless vertebrate, supporting organs tied together with blood and bound with skin and shame. My thoughts are all desire and hunger and lust and loathing. She envelopes me in softness and suffocates me in tenderness and yet for all that I know I will leave her broken and disused, disposed, unloved and unwanted. I am nothing, but another scar for her to bear.

I am like a little boy who was bitten by a rabid cur, and now refuses to pet a puppy. She stalks me like a different kind of predator though, not a hound, not a wolf, something slimmer and more precise. Like a snake in the gutter, or a rat in the attic, I jump in fear at the smallest noise and I am never at ease. The smell of them gets in my nose and I can't focus, the sight of them sets me on edge and peace is a pipe dream. So I'll sit with my good friend Jackson the III and pretend I am someone else, someone without my silly problems.

So she lied, what I can do about it? So she took off with the precious little I had left, who's gonna help me get it back? I heard a myth behind the mirror of the day that the Devil and Satan made a deal. The Devil said, “I'll wager I can make men suffocate themselves with their own skin”, to which Satan replied, “Not if I can get them wondering where their hands have been”. And so this is how I know I am not a God, and this is why she stuck me full of pins like a voodoo doll. Just sit back and relax, they tell me, that cold sting against my throat? Oh that? Hm...definitely not a knife, they grin. All those little spot and drips on the wood and wool? Just my loneliness seeping into my home. All that smoke and scribblings? Just my voice and muzzle getting out of hand.

There's this symbol, that once stood for something, something real and heavy, but now these street-walkers wear it like a badge of honor. If you try to speak to them in way the symbol maker spoke, their ears bleed. And yet people wonder why I am so angry with pink skinny jeans and slim black tank tops, and these ridiculous earrings. So I wore it like a bull's eye, and now everyone thinks I am one of those slender mouth-breathers, all aghast and slack-jawed rubber-necking revelry, isn't Europe across the river? Oh wait, that's Illinois, how silly of me. Pistols and training bras, oh yeah, it's Saturday night again, someone hold me down. I am dragging myself kicking and screaming back into the closet, I can't make up my mind if I like it on the outside after all. I swear on Odin's one good eye, the next girl to ask me who the good looking guy with the guitar was is gonna taste cold steel in her womb via my eyes.

I take a handful of nails, to be specific four and five, and I take this hammer, to be pedantic a thumb, and pound them into her chest, his eyes, their toes, our ears, and my erogenous zones. Can you hear the music now, Frances?! You might ask yourself: “Gee, Louie, this is all well and mighty interesting, but what does all this have to do with the girl with your fingernails in her scalp? Not that this little tangent ain't powerful intriguing”, I would tell you to fucking listen for once. Can't you see the connection? There is none, and that's the connection. Sound familiar? Didn't think so. Okay, here, one and one make three. Make sense yet?

The sparks fall on my naked shoulders but I am not burned. Prognosis? If you said I was dreaming, you're in the wrong house, buddy. If you said all of the above, you're on the right path. So two rats are in a boat, and one turns to the other and says “I never got the chance to kiss my mother goodbye” and the other keeps humping the corpse of his sister, because he's a goddamn vermin incapable of abstract thought, with only needs and the means to meet those needs on his mind. So which rat am I? One and one make three, friend. Incidentally, the rats are white. Maybe that will put it into perspective.