Sublimation

The art of dismissing what you crave. The lawsuit in your throat pleading innocent. The jury in your bed deliberating just cause. In the hiss of beer bottles. On xanax wings and magic carpets made of semen.

I used to be an artist. Used to know how to draw. Faces I'd never seen. Portraits of people I'd never known. Isn't that what an artists does? Recognizes in strangers what they don't know of themselves. Isn't that was art is? Finding the voice in the part of us that cannot speak.

Now I'm just a discard. A cold raven that raps at empty chamber doors. Pecking at peots who don't listen. Culling the worms from lovers corpses to feed the desires of flightless birds.

In quixotic synonyms meant to spoil the distance between myself and them. Little boobytraps of words. To sort the analysts from the poets. The demon naked with whims of the flesh. Debating the meaning of the relapse. As I recover every night to the sanctuary of my destruction. The trial a parody of lovers in thick makeup. In giant shoes. In a circus of ambivalence. As every lover must appear to those so consumed with this sickness.

Pretty dolls with their feet chewed off. Beautiful dolls in the ugly clothes we've chosen for them.