Kamikaze

A kamikaze of pointlessness.

Leaden words pervade the air and perforate the silence,
an earthquake in a bubble,
flirtatious locusts.
A silent black on which to paint the most accurate of portraits,
not caricatured by convention,
but alive.

And the nurses in their uniforms, creased,
like origami birds:
pretty, white and stiff,
flit by with dry eyes and empty minds.
Sharp talons
pumping morphine into paper cuts,
and prescribing morality
for the flesh-wounds
and the cancer.

Pills of nitro-glycerine.

Harvested in a state of ingrained myopia
by the birds,
eyes transfixed onto the dirt
under their toenails.

A shadow of ignorance.

Cast by Armani penguins and their monuments:
unsightly pillars of second-hand sweat.
They preach equality from their nostrils;
righteousness.
As another ugly duckling is beheaded.

Spoken bullets swarm my vision.
Their sights are kaleidoscopes, their aim erratic.
I am blind and catatonic;
withdrawn into my misanthropic mind where I am safe.
I am never safe.

I shield myself with laughter to disguise from the nurses
the hiss of oxygen evacuating slowly
from my lungs, shredded cellophane.
deflating in defeat.

I am afraid of no horizons,
just of what festers underneath.

Where every single breath is a battlefield.