In an alternate universe I lost my way

in sizzling neon lights.        they leave ghosts in my eyes.
The soothing burn of whisky.

feminine silhouettes cast by burning "open" signs,         my mind dies little deaths.   
they walk in reckless trance. 
A human lumbering, lurching towards another's flesh 

The uglier I get, the more beautiful everyone else becomes.

Oh Death, the seductress! 
She will feel the sting in a feather—
penned tattoo 

of a thin moon.

Fight me; O Death
I belong to combat.


lust is a leprosy; we hold our wretched skin to the fire for some comfort in pain. 
There is worse than pain, dear one. 

caught in the mind's cobwebs 
where pain becomes a helper

Come to me, lost soul, 
For I am the absence of truth, and I will hold you.

The mind needs truth like the body needs medicine.  

my tongue           a runway           for flies