still life

still

life

“Head of a Guillotined Man”  by Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault

he listens for my heart beat

with his ear pressed into

the ink.

silence like the insides

of seashells.

this is death’s still life.

it stares

from hollow coal sockets

that once swallowed

the world.

his is a presence that

stalks like

clawing fogs

violent wrought iron

and granite too thick

to lift. 

he spills sanguine cabernet

onto white innocent

linens as life

drains his veins.

verdigris skin slinks

against his skull

and his single tooth

makes digestion

difficult

because i too

have death on my breath.

it slips into my skin and

sips at my cells.

behind my eyelids

it is all black

and when we blink

we don’t always

 come back

lovers & fuckers

before there was sex

he loved my
warm silk wrists and
electric pulse

 
he placed his cheek
beneath my clavicles
to whisper to my

skin

and trace my spine

with kisses

before

black plastic sex boxes
colored rubber cocks

before

pizza porn
circumcised sausages
closeups of
slick pink lips

 stitched breasts and

coccyx stamped
suicide chicks

girls had
sexy ankles.

and that soft space
behind my ears
where you
brush secrets and
your thumbs.
 

and now i miss

the innocence

of your porcelain

kiss 

snakes shed skin in casings

he sits inside the ghost

of a cowboy marlboro
and half a stale croissant

atop a stack of hustlers.

 his cold coffee collects smoke and ashes
which float like snow at midnight

and he sips at it anyway.

the chick he caked last night
has a perfect circle birthmark
that dots her spine in the center

the shitshack rorschach stares

and he snakes the last
of his smoke towards the yellowed
stucco ceiling and
thinks about