Feeding my flame,
Crackles and pops with every lie.
Licking my lips
to taste hearts sizzle.
Smoke thickly laced with innocence
ascends slowly into the incinerated sky.

My eyes sting from the stench of
rejection and arrogance
and virulence
and audacity,
mixed in with the tiniest amount
of neglect.

Fearful of truth
and of suffocation.
They could reveal my manipulation
and put out my fire.
I remain steady in the center
of my brilliant, blazing ring.

Within my glorious conflagration
lie incandescent embers glowing
and the willpower of the
easily persuaded.
those lost and lonely I welcome
into fiery arms.

The closer they get to my burning circle
the more they melt,
their bodies charring,
with eyes aflame.
And the only lullaby here is the
sound of searing flesh.

Heat seeps out of the infinite inferno,
igniting my soul, temporarily sating
my scalding need for power.
Somewhere among trillions of tiny
ashes are my morals and emotions;
dazzled, dizzied, and dispersed.

One tragedy of being confined in this
godless hell is that,
no one can enter the fire
without being flayed alive.
So here I remain,
alone in my abominations.