the city eats its young

by Allister Nelson

Hydrangeas burn blue, and your acidity

still eats at my carrion limbs.

(Barbed wire wit, a tongue like glass

blooming brains on the pavement cracks,

I cut myself on apostles, kiss Judas lips.)

You were always the blackened disciple,

so quick to pass over the lambs.

You sought lions and bled them dry,

ripped aorta from tiger-flesh.

Wild messenger, mad messiah,

you carried me in arms like sleep,

carved gospels into milk skin.

Flower fractals, I danced on your spear,

impaled myself upon amygdala,

lay down in the ruin of your words-

You brought legions to their elbows,

neck deep in paralysis, splatterpunk,

rocked the ages with a staff of serpents,

charmed Goliath and stole Midas’ touch-

How could I not love the riddle of you?

The cool persuasion of your spinal tap?

The melody of your manacle drag?

All dolled up in ash, like charnel ground Shiva,

you cast stars to divine the Ohm of my resistors

but found only fractured wires, and broken necks.

For the truth is I am asphodel before you,

in a field of forgetting, neck-deep in Lethe.

Oh Hades of my Solomon songs-

let me be the Kore of your temptation apple,

the blueberry blush of your sins.

Confess, confess your idols-

                                              I will smash them like pillars of salt.

My mournful wind will spice you,

with spikenard and ichor and gold.

My psalms will forever entice you,

anoint you with crushed graves and mold.

Come to me, embrace me, my sage one,

taste the dandelion seed of my song,

crush me, consume me, my sweet one.

Will you ravage me bruised,

blooming bomb?