Holllywood

                victimized by                deliquescence                & still                bleeding from                tender blackness,                the fresh valleys                between crushed                teeth:                you would be                a vicodin                transcendentalist                with a love for                non-existence like                the smothered                melody of                silenced laughter.

He wished for curtains, so that he could swing them closed like eyelids with tassel lashes, to keep the moonlight from invading his sleep-seduced body. (Crouched, head buried into knees, hands in weakened prayer.) They would frame the sunlit glass, (when the sun awoke, arms outstretched, translucent fingers that stroked clouds) with the silhouette of the city, faint and far, peering into the room, and the hand-print of a lover smudged into the color. If the curtains parted, he would glance down, and see the scratches the ladder left on the windowsill. Instead the tassels were made of rusted iron, and the glass was tinted black.