The Instruments of Torture

The manger between her breasts blossoming. The comic book in his pants blaming the audience. For all this quiet. His grin an accordion. Choking on its own tired dance.

The spectrum asks us. Are the colors there? Who sees what. How many colors are there that we can't.

He barfs long and proud. Sick with people. Shadows paint the walls in shades of dark. He counts the nothings.

I could bend the ladder. Climb it all backward. See it as though I had never been there. The psychic fetching her eyes. In distant rumbles of knowing why everyone has forgotten.

The perforated page. Waiting to be torn.

The devil turns his watch back. Hours before I knew it mattered. The whole world has imagined us. Not as we are, but as we could've been. A name for this poison that cures us.

Monsters and gods overlapping. Monsters and men. negoiating how.

They differ.

Wolves test their fangs against this stone. As hungry as I am. There is no blood.