There\'s a whisper in my ear.
It tells me stories and I write them down.
Tales of little kids and alien morals
Cross my vision and swim away into nothing.
I put them in the cell phone
That my mother bought for me,
Marveling at how disenchanted I\'ve grown
To the magic of distracting voices.
The syntax sings in my mouth as I mutter
The words I tap into the screen.
The navigation bar is stained piss yellow
And the afterimage reads 11% battery remaining.
My broken watch ticks aimlessly
As the words dribble from my fingers
Like the quiet cries of the song bird
Better poets have dreamed of.
There is no thought. There is no meaning.
A hopeless wart pretending to serve
Alongside the greats in the ever dwindling
Endeavor of immortality.
I think on what I\'ve written.
I taste the verbs and snort the adjectives
And pretend my heart is racing because of them
And not the man staring blankly at a fading screen.
My lips are soft like her voice when I tremble.
I peel the skin off and mush the lower lip together
And force blood to rise, shrieking from the sore.
I taste the tang of red iron and imagine
The stories that would drip out of those lips as to why I mutilate their pathetic skin.
You don\'t ask me questions.
I don\'t tell any lies.
But we both avert our eyes when my sleeves ride up at work.