November | 2018 | pisceanesque

I have no tolerance for hope. Hope survives
on leftovers and unwilling loss: a soiled casket of
emptiness for every six feet of paragraph
it wades behind. Hope stuffs itself between the words
and the meaning, loudly camouflaged by
gambling and cigarettes, declining to altercate but
lathered by a demand to be seen. It shuns you,
but needs you desirable, a voyeurist: a
lap dancing ghost to keep it current.
Hope is a pimp
and you whore yourself to keep it primed,
shedding your skin like a puree of missing passports,
onion tears soaking sensibility after raw
sensibility, riding hope faster than your hips can keep up,
because, and after all,
there has to be a better place than this.
Time is just an expanse to harness,
a mount for crossing –
and you must wager everything,
from soul to sex
to grind it hard to a halt.