I sharpen every syllable until the edge begins to bleed,
planting jagged rows of intellect like a winter crop of seed.
I wear a suit of irony to hide the shaking of my hands
while building fortresses of logic on these shifting coastal sands.
You try to touch the center but you trip upon a pun—
I am the master of the blackout while I’m staring at the sun.
My vocabulary is a razor and I’m cutting out the light,
to keep the prying eyes away throughout the middle of the night.
I’ve got a metaphor for every bruise I managed to acquire.
I am dancing in the wreckage and I’m spitting at the fire.
The woman in the hallway wants to know the way I feel;
I offer her a limerick and a heart made out of steel.
She looks for the opening but I’ve soldered up the seam
with the cold and clinical precision of a fever dream.
I’d rather be a clever corpse than a living breathing fool,
living by the rigid lines of a geometric rule.
Every clever observation is a brick inside the wall,
waiting for the gravity that’s going to make the structure fall.
I am hemorrhaging the truth while I am polishing the prose,
a solitary predator that nobody ever knows.
I am the architect of distance and the king of the retort,
a ship that’s always sinking but I’m never leaving port.
The punchline is a bullet and the target is my chest;
I am putting every honest thought to a permanent arrest.
My wit is just a window that I’m painting pitch-black
to make sure that the world can never find a way back.
The party’s getting louder and I’m winning every fight,
leaving wounded egos in the wreckage of the light.
I am walking to the car with a pocket full of glass,
watching all the human warmth begin to flicker and to pass.
I get home to the silence and I lay upon the floor,
lacing up the bitterness behind the bolted door.
The only one I didn’t trick is the man inside the glass,
watching every single chance at a connection start to pass.
My tongue is still a instrument but my ribs are feeling thin,
wondering how much longer I can keep the winter in.