The rich pay for busted hints of deathlessness.

You learn to say the name the color of old spirits.

The rich feign at entropy.

You name your dream: prison.

A plan is formed.

*

The ocean forms the ideal excuse for luxury.

And abortion.

Again: you want to keep on, skin in skin.

Days pass.

A voice taunts your ill form.

Whispers on board: blood, gulls, scarred bellies.

Land: love is capture.

*

You are left with baubles, pickled losses to be.

Some complacent love formed in a miscarriage of tents.

A voice relays your timid width and stupid legs.

Nothing left.

*

Except for dogs.

*

Crept under snow: a plan for murder.

Can’t write that down.

The saved watch the unsaved go gaunt.

*

Dumb fucking love.

*

You wrote your death out again and burned it. Coward.

*

The men go out and work themselves into double amputees.

*

Burn the dogs.

Death alleviates the weight of the worst.

She draws out a suicide pact, failing to convince.

The soon to die eat the new dead.

You just wait.

*

You move your hand to kill your love.

A voice taunts you, asks for lightning.

Men like you were come ashore.

The voice: asks for dawn.

The city came up, without you.

Crystallized honor, your father’s statue missing.

The swarm asks of your blood.

*

Warmed by Robert, the journey’s first seer.

Robert walks wealth.

Robert wants your dead woman.

*

Industry flowers and chokes.

*

Entertainment flowers and chokes.

*

We are given reptiles.

Blood exits.

Smoke continues.

—
Ken Baumann is. For more, see kenbaumann.com.