Pursuing Sirens

poetroy


I am magnetized to sirens; like
Conquistadors of old; like
resigned mariners.

With sloth the soothsayer speaks;
with pride she predicts the gravity
of tomorrow's newsstands.

The crackled whispers in her coded
breath whisk me away with lust for
bloodshed.

I chase these auditory hallucinations
down streets I never knew so well;
pursuing with a wrath I have not known.

Spiraling Ecureuils flutter above
violent smoke piers, enticing gutless gluttony
with disastrous kitchen scents.

My fingertips sprint across dials; meters;
switches. Mildly stroking colorless, broken light.
Each negative stab a sirin to the sedated.

Black bags exit buildings in blue hands;
yellow strings to tie greedy paparazzi to pavement, observing
white charcoal shadow puppets written in white hands.

One winking eye raised; infested
fascination crushes ribs, crushes
infatuated spirits.
A soul tossed on jagged rocks,
devoured by deranged shark teeth.

In silent cardboard detention,
envying for pursuit of flesh,

I decay from within;

my breath shortens to ribbons.

Now I scour sunsoaked lanes, a
jaywalker's purgatory, for the
viscera of a different animal,
the distorted tangles of my own breed.

As I lag, certain horrors realize their potency;
the silence of the sirens is worse than their song,
a panic not in need of wax or chain prisons.

Never have I aged more wading

in the fountain of forsaken youth.