I. my head’s dead…

laying down on the bed,
my head is dead
and fermentin,
like cheap, acidic wine,
boiling ugly bubbles
toward my dirtied, nothing sky,
which it stains.
I stare at the water marks left behind.

my ugly, bubbly brain
enjoys to stain,
but now it’s all purged.
I see steamy vomit on the floor.

there’s a little left I can’t kill in me,
I wish that’s all I could always be.

II.…only remnants of true self remain…

my heart’s not pumping wine tonight,
nor that empty, corrosive red.
there’s a wild, tired blue
trickling through.

mean muscles collapse.
that’s fine,
they can’t push mess into meaning.
I’m cool, I’m soft, again.
flesh is bending,
melding with me until I feel real,
weak and longing.

that’s alright to admit,
with just me and my dreams,
especially since,
I’m a cartographer;

I’ve marked asphalt and trees,
seen myself from hill to hole,
measured the pressure of lava flows and water flows,
and mapped
every tedious, breathing part of me,
including those darkened, dreary seas
we’re not meant to see.

III.…and it’s longing for better things I’ve lost.

I feel ghost fingers
moving upward,
counting each crooked vein,
searching for that subdued beating.

my veins are blue trickles,
remnants of the last wild rivers,
that once flowed with vigor,
flowering into outlets
as honeyed wine.

watered by cold, winter rains,
mine still twist through,
swollen and slow.
I feel those dream fingers swimming
in my blue,
I’d like to swim in theirs, too.

I hope they stay
till my blood stops and freezes
in cold, winter skin
and I realize I’m totally alone,
tired and broke,
remembering a ghost I hardly knew
in some dream I had, back when
I often felt
the blue blood swell.