Chair and Chamber

Chair and Chamber

Thrash, thrash against your bounds
throwing your head back to see
who is pulling you up out of the muck,
the gas, the ache, the simple chair of steel.
----
Hush,
see the raindrop come down so far, all for a 'plop'.
Still, thrash, strain, pull, sudden and joyful.
School's out, the bell is ringing deep, carrying you home.
The funny thing is, you can't even really hear it.
----
Goosepimple, flesh-wrench, guillotine-pinch.
Loving the smell of rot, you write back from hell,
or rather from the banks of a burning river.
The crowd mills clear of the water, stretches back,
up, across for miles, waiting to cross, jostling.
You struggle to the front, look over the water,
but it's not your turn.
The boatman looks at the crowd,
looks at his boat,
and grimaces.
It is small,
and he, cold.
----
Chill,
scrabbling from inside your stomach,
painting your skin blue, your breath white,
telling you, "Do you adore it so much,
that old feeling of drifting away from your body?
Addicted to any feeling you don't understand
that you want to feel it again and again and
again until you are between my fingers?
Yearning to be at a loss? Chill,
it's going to be alright."
----
Two coins for the boatman, a gift in a box of wood for the earth,
or ash for the river and smoke for the air,
footsteps to echo, tick-tocks to echo, whistle to the breeze.
I will see you to the door, I will watch you from the window,
I will dog you with a pant-pant, I will flap-flap in the sky,
I will dig-dig in the yard and chop-chop in the woods,
I will sit still in the clearing, I will see you
again.
Well paid in silver tears, I am taxman
of breathe-in-breathe-out-blink.
----
"Take your seats." "I'm sorry." "...guilty." "Come again?" "...to death."
"Cigarette?" "No, thanks." "Oh well." "You shouldn't. It's bad for you."
----
Dribbling blood, drip-drip, plip-plop, gush...
warm as the smoke unbreathed, well-remembered.
Why does it pain to see them breathing it in?
Or does it pain to see them breathing it out?
Cyanide chamber, ignited with warmth.
What a frigging waste.
Why even bother? Why are you...at all?
Orange tip, fizzle-fizzle-blink. Peace out.
----
Warmth slipping, now tumbling, cold-blooded, mean,
giving up the joust, only breathing down into a chair
of steel and gas and smoke and muck and ache.
----
"You care too much what others say."
----
Sinking into the metal pond, no sound, no heat, no tick,
no cold, no rot, no crowds, no dig, no tock.
----
"Chill. You can die for all I care."
----
"Hush, I'm a raindrop."

A/N: I had some spacing between verses, but it's not showing up. Don't think it could cause too much trouble, though. I've put in hiphens where the spaces were.