Carefully, caution breaks like waves on the shore.
The twice-rowed heart trawling my chest’s floor
gasps; twinned arteries swell with white light
anticipating the red showering forward. Nights
like this don’t run—they tend to pour. Slaves
sweating velvet hustle—wrestle—with their rights
to get a glimpse at the wronged. Gin and spite
fuel our procession from the parlour to the back door;
along the hall, paper perspires what the walls wore.

A lace of cotton for the wounds—we need to make sure
we look battered when the sound bleeds into our pores—
our inhibition shorn, we are the ashen flock so alike
we’re blacked-out. We compensate for redaction like
bureaucrats lacking sight of who we work for; it pays
to attack opinions warmed-over; fictive pork sliced
like fact is what we go in for. I’ll take it; on the assault line,
let them hit me, because the fault is all mine. In terms
of prophets, I make a ritualistic killing. Fame (b)earns.