ℎ𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑎 𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑓 𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑡

prince's playground

When I fail to comprehend the disease,
A needle poised: labelled love pinches
Harder than weights & longer than heights.

In a pin straight spine, I curl and weep
In a shape; a circle then suddenly shapeless
In a nightmare so frequent, it's almost a dream.

Give it a doze of anaesthesia—double it,
You get a numb heart which can't guess
A freefall & think its oxygen kissing its body

& I know the sound of mirth; it's a device
You can get in black markets—can cause
To kill, to tear skin apart; use with caution.

To say, I am my blood: the lungs would be
My skin which breaks in a paper's line
So now blood is under and over my skin—

You fit a needle into one side, it's a habit,
& sew it in a sweater made of illegal wool
& parasites, but dissected into kisses

Of death. Forbidden apples, I call them
Because everyone tastes them & no one lives:
Is this a hall of cinnamons creating lucidity?

If you're a curious child, peel the ribs
Like they are orange peels, there's a puncture
In the place where the conscience had eloped;

But don't hold it, it's a fatal love affair
& if I see you, it's just a delusion
Deluded to a vacant room full of contagions.

It's a playground where five year olds
Are tattoo artists, drawing headless figures
On collarbones like a bidded necklace.

You, like the white skirt of a blue ocean
Like the white clouds of a blue sky
Like the whites of the bluest eye

Creep onto the back of my head, bashed
Door, slide in with two shades—my eyes
Close like a fading moon in the sun's beauty.

This is now a park of spirits; sea momentary.
If there ever was a cure for my disease,
You have destroyed all the known keys.