this old place again

[sleaze]

I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies tell you my sins so you can sharpen your knife He tries not to sleep because in sleep the purple recedes, bleeds into dreams. In sleep the images come: the clown with the Glasgow smile, the tiger with no face, the name carved in his stomach. The thought, so assured, like a mantra, a heartbeat: she loves us. She loves us. She loves us. He wakes and thinks, torn: there was a girl. He wakes and thinks, torn: there was no girl. There was no fire, no name writ across his stomach, no water filling his body, drowning. The lack of sleep further lessens his control over his mind, and it ricochets, unsteady, visits animals and plants and other horses. From her, he sees a valley, a kingdom ruled. But then there is a new sensation: his own mind, being touched. Does she see the purple? Does she see beyond? “I’m…” he begins to respond to her question but truth is, he doesn’t know. He wishes there was a drug to explain it away, “I don’t know what happened. What is happening.” “My name is Sleaze,” he says. The name is his. Behind the purple, in unplumbed depths of his mind, chime other voices from other worlds: I am Cloud. I am Velvet. I am. I am. I am. sleaze cancer x garbage