as I retreat from the ashes that once blinded my eyes with the voices
of God.
Memories in my awakening;
the years of the number;
the throbbing flames.
What could have been will cease to ever be and I see it.
It preys on the weak with a preemptive blaze to set.
A newly born child exits the womb engulfed in flames
and I see it through the filter of a family who whispers erratically
the wind to feed the flames of a raging disease,
and with each breath, my insanity grows,
and 23 stand to molest my soul.
Without the figt a cold itch seethes
and the blackened, iron gates of hate and hopelessness open
the emraces of my heart with a perfect match, and slammed shut
behind me
my sympathies.
And 23 follow through gaps in the bars.
Paranoia and hatred find me in the machine-
once a world so pure,
a world encapsulated in flames
and like a disease that dwells within the festering parasite beneath
my skin.
Loneliness pierces my eyes and robs me of breath.
The skins of its lovers the number has worn
forever trapped in its web,
in decrepit remembrance of my lover's soul
torn from existence and stretched by oblivion,
23 mock us.
And I cannot let go clutching the hair of my lifeless product.
My lover.
23 my insanity.
Now a state-
transparent nothingness.
I find refuge in conversations with oblivion,
unwillingly reshaped and cast back into a world.
Such purity I've never seen.
Surreal comfort and radiant ambiance-
agage are my eyes to marvel in such majesty.
And in the back of my mind,
something burns.
And 23 waits patiently.
