i. “Brilliance”

Alive, alive and I annihilate
     myself—why else, but to make a statement:
     author-author, creator/destroyer
     always burning up just for stories, my
     love, my one, my only certainty what
     most hurts me, masochism masquerading
     as unabashèd passion has my skin
     working hard, working out like a demon
     my most Fascist tendency to dictate
     what people believe in, reading my flesh
     when at its worst it’s bleeding what’s best kept
     secret, this verse so deceiving it keeps
     on breathing even if ignored, even
     in those moments my forsaken pores stop
     leaking, since what I spill is what I will
     and making up is so much better than
     maintaining love, evil just comes and comes
     until tragic words summon the reason
     for its appearance down into the hell
     we often tell ourselves we belong in.

                    ii. “Sparkle”

To burn always hard, with a gem-like flame,
     to paint over failure and break guilt’s frame
     is the art of a blind man, tracing out
     circles around him, drawing on his hurt
     to draw up refinement from down within,
     no well deeper than the Self one digs, each
     seeking if he can handle it, knowledge
     of what silent things spring up from a mile
     inside a mind denial lined with shit—
     too long hid is the song no lips can spit,
     yet cannot hide, that hymn soft then softer
     said, that battle cry my pen lisps as it
     slips on pitchfork paper before it splits
     open my resolve, villagers with lit
     torches always at my door, big hits worth
     less when the meaning’s ignored, the concept
     so much more than what these fools can perceive,
     since mine’s a vision no one can receive,
     its light can only be interpreted
     and I am its lamp, my words its colours.

                    iii. “Durability”

Alive, alive and I annihilate
     myself—why wait? its lithe fatalism makes
     futile every attempt to race from
     its prophesied break, a life no more than
     an installation, a live performance,
     an experimental work whose paint takes
     an entire existence to dry, so I
     choose to saint myself, canonize my next
     incarnation in shades of flame my tongue’s
     taken for the occasion, since the stain
     I’m laying is incorruptible, this
     page permanent, this verse impossible
     to destroy, its pigment, bits, and pixels
     stubborn to deconstruct since, once written
     with an immortal hand, one’s confessions
     tend to outlive themselves, not absolved, not
     forgotten, never forgiven, we who
     look in Pandora’s Box, the wide one where
     we openly imprison our inmost
     thoughts in public glimpse, die of consumption.