Bad Days

Monsters sit on trashy couches

Pink cockroaches climb up

Those crumbling walls

Dogs mate in the corner

And rats eat a chicken carcass on the floor

The swine lay around

Leaving puddles of oil in their seats

All of them scatter however,

When I decide to bare my teeth

You can bleach

And you can scrub

And you can clean and polish these walls

And make it so the shell

Shines eerily in the white

But the organs of this place are dying

And will soon seep through the cracks

Ironically,

I have to wash you from time to time

And rid you of color

Because that reminds you of the black

And me of the horrors in your head.

Though I can make these notes invisible

I can never seem to clean your nerves

But they soon become dirty again

So we sit on the floor together

Alone in pools of filth, madness,

and a desperate hope for white.

I can’t tell if it will ever come.

Besides your greatest efforts

I’ll still hold your hands

They’re slippery from the ink

But I’ve done all I can

We try so hard not to look into their eyes

Even as the claws run down your back

I can only wince for you, even if I look forward.

And when they run down mine

Please don’t scream so loudly dear

You’re going to make my ears bleed

And finally we leave

The walls crumble

The glass shatters

The dogs neutered and the rats spiked

The cockroaches squished against the floorboards

And the pigs cooked alone.

That oily place burns behind us

As I hold your hand and sharpen my teeth.

The monsters follow us out on rusty bicycles.

“You should have killed them”

You say with a kiss.

Submitted and published in “In Flight Lit Mag” during late 2015