—informal, ephemeral, and femoral, we perform all the tricks, go through all the motions, pull out all • the stops, but without a break, working a verdigris magic disagreeable to those whose hollers’ colourful language • our resilience resists, twinned hybrid headcases, hydra-headed self-deteriminists, together believing only in existing without consequence, so has • been the skeleton architecture on which the confidence carrying the burden of our circumstances ever since we • •

went for broke, going full-throttle for once not giving a shit or showing any apology, not seeking • any forgiveness, when so outspoken in front of audiences our collective wit shattered, too savage, the two • of us always have had one back, spine just enough to stand in the face of those • who cannot stand us, unbroken bone formed from two halves of the same whole, fall on your • •

knees you gracless thing, sing in your humility of tumultuous assault, a dirge grieving your greed’s loss, • mournful splinter of a doleful symbol, you reprehensible deed winking aching holes ablink with plaintive pall, pull • on your coat of flesh and scold the world you once called yours before it left your • fingers’ hold to form a fist ever since you let cull your soul its disinterest after you • •

grew old, this is hell’s protocol, regrettiquette the most painful school to fail, dignity never learned can • never return, miserable that every misfortune of yours is written in our blood, that it burns, serenade • of tear-gas waiting for no moment to pass, irritating to the last it must feel, this inability, • or is it unwillingness, to heal? regardless, yours is ours and what you bleed even my silence • •

refuses to keep concealed, words are how I deal, burying in allegory, simile, and metaphor, blanketing in • hyperbole, a derelict year we need to let be lost, to disappear into disrepair, as if Van • Gogh’s splatter patterns of dots, dashes, and frantic colour were a cry for help, every canvas an • SOS, making artistry of his damage, remorseful, in a sense, every puncture intended, mind bent on rest—