we come together now, the strobe light is so bright, burning our skin up until it cracks and peels, we dance together now in agonizing stop-motion like zombies in a funhouse, dressing up like pigs but no pearls were thrown before me, just a couple of drops on my chest because it was my birthday, and in two minutes my parents will pry the roof off this waking slumber party, bodies will scatter, evidence will wash away with my tears on your hollow chest. what are these hands for? what is your heart for?///you lured me with the crawling poison, tears streaming, deer screaming, peer-to-peer streaming, downloading some deerhoof/deerhunter. late at night while you're sleeping, poison ivy comes a-creeping around. crying in their sleep and their abuse they'd mumble, a period of mourning in the morning, murmuring. drink a bus and do a jumble. drink your mumbles and think about lumber, or a game of marbles interrupted by an earthquake. after birth was in april, birth was in march, terse, so strange that she's pregnant again. don't you let a little bit of dirt scare you. it's what you're made of. 'from dust ye came and to dust ye shall return,' but i apologize, i don't quote scripture well. i just quote the 80 year old man screaming/mouthing deer chants o'er a sonic boom/the sound of gloom with head drapes/red grapes.///help me donna, i don't think i know where the sidewalk ends in this studio glow. let's ascend from the set and pretend to forget all the crimes we commit for the camera. sleepwalking through the workplace weekday to weaken the effect that i'm feeling, doped up and duping myself through the drama. tell me donna, do you do the same thing? and when the movie stops talking you will interject with a calculated hand brushed across your neck. could care less if you're careless but careful when you undress your secrets to me. and if your fingers get stained from those cigarettes you could always wear those gloves that you bought last year of that hidden shade of crimson. wrapped up in your lips i'm losing you. but maybe nothing's real inside this hell, where everyone is acting like they're someone else. all the bright burning lights have dried up our eyes. if we cry, we won't/don't even notice.///i pick up my feet, i change my sheets, i switch the locks when they tell me to, but there's nowhere left in this world where i can feel safe from you.///