Ashes Might Go Down Easier
Once in a while -in a moment
of immense sulfurous clarity, when
every grace I locked in my dilated pupils
begins to form lesions, yellow-running
tears through the deepest, lusty scarlet –
black and white would be a relief.
My mind billows like sheets,
silken, swathing whore-hues
over my perception.
I have to turn my head, hold my eyelashes together
with two fingers
hoping reality is more palatable
in the abstract.
On the edges of my eyes, where the
tawny evil beckons, bending
streaks of light, blurred through my subconscious
I see myself continue.
Unfamiliar limbs flowing over the sidewalk,
never missing an ill-fated furrow,
the cracks that I know will break me
before they seep poison into my mother’s back.
I’ll set aflame this fool’s-gold heart in
my crimson-stained fingers
and hope I don’t burn myself down
like the insanity with her claws on my eyes,
holding every torch high and shrieking to the
heavens for
fire, fire, fire;
No pretenses, just destruction –
hope ashes don’t lodge in my throat
like the drunken revelry,
the celebration: saliva and child-sobbing
unending in the streetlamps
gag-reflex mercy from the pitiless
that preceded them.
Copyright © Hana Ryusaka | Year Posted 2009
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