Bleed a Song for me, Dear

Bleed a song for me tonight, dear.
Pour a curdling symphony
From the gash betwixt your ribs,
I want to feel your agony.
Ripped from the place that once was peace;
Now a lowly, loathing insect feast.

Dear,
I’ve been dead for far too long.
The weight of lead leads me to wrong
Notions of what as of late
Stir my thoughts like Rorschach ink.
Can a soul evaporate?
The deafening fog of fate, I think,
Has come to dissolve memory
Of my stain on history.

Of frost and flame, I do not  know—
I do feel lost— dear,
does it show?
The bitter, nipping fangs of ice;
The membrane broiling scald of sun,
They’re nothing but a muted shun.
I’ve only detached and diluted
Words of undisputed woe
To blindly iterate
The Indescribable sensations
Of an empty hole—
My fate!

The lukewarm soup,
In which I stew, is tasteless— bland—
A humdrum broth of stale rye pity.
Everything around seems gray.
The colors of the rainbow fade.
I’m floating in a briny haze;
All that’s left are long delayed,
Child-scrawled ideas of pain.
A bloodless numb is what remains,
Like cotton stuck upon my tongue—
A mothball bath—
Or lengthy sips of novocain.

My phantom senses make me think:
“Am I real?”
Or wads of hair
Clogged in your sink.

I’ve given up on subtleties;
Creature comforts can’t appease
That which I’ve lost—
And what I need—
Is far beyond my sanity.
Give me
Screeching, scraping,
Ripping, raking,
Peeling, tearing
Torment now!
Nothing short of torture, dear,
Holds appeal— I want what’s real!
Rape my thinnest tracts of skin
With serrated, rusty tins.
Lift and peel—
Expose my flesh!
I just need to
Feel again!

Make it burn, dear.
Make it sting!
Make the letting of my
Cold blood
Sing!

Please, dear!
Please.
Pull this bandaid off my soul.
Expose!
Expose!
Those tender, tendril flows
Of nerves that never end—
Brittle, branching—
Nerve endings.

—And if—
Exposure renders me
To flatline-incapacity,
Break a bottle on my corpse;
Then drink to me
And sink within
The comfort
Of this requiem:

      In the end
      I suffered slow,
      Leftover lover,
      Let me go.