________________________________________________________________

my words crumble 
all earthquake-like 
into an unknown darkness. 
i submerge myself in 
eyeballs that spew
warm self-criticism.
i escape the unfamiliarity 
of these redundant verses. 

the eyeballs
pry into past thoughts
into bygone poems: 
"why the hell did you romanticize 
this fragile ego?" 
they squelch to me
in unison. 

i harvest 
the humour of the eyes 
and they watch me 
suspiciously. 

they zap my wanton squishy 
thieving grey-matter brain 
(possibly with skull-piercing lasers 
or other equally alarming weapons 
similar in purpose, 
and often the cause of 
gaping holes in my 
imagination.) 
such weaponized pests 
search fiendishly for 
whatever self-serving scraps remain 
of my lonely, silver tongue. 

this is why 
strings of rotten words 
of estranged letters 
squelch naked out of my fingers in hoards: 
but these verses are without love. 
these words disregard 
how they used to lie still 
silently fulfilling their purpose 
on my piece of paper. 

and nowadays
the only thing that i 
can honestly muster 
out of this vile brain 
that now resides under the 
constant vigilance of my pet eyeballs
and in the seemingly perpetual absence 
of actual talent ---- 
is this satisfyingly weird 
predictably vertical 
sort-of-ugly
arrangement of words.