The Common Breakdown

We are blistered hearts
shuddering from the friction
and no matter how hard
we break our cheeks to grin
we are still wearing thin

So lick your teeth while
they're still in your head
and bite the breasts
of your lovers, one by one
while you can remember their faces


Because all is overlapping
in this downpour
and sodden ground
and the disks in our spines
are slipping out, our vertebra
clacking together to the rhythm
of our coughing, wobbling atop
one another like wooden blocks
to keep us from collapsing


Raise up your fingertips
to carress the rainfall
while you still have a soul
to rejoice with
catch the pearls of water
on your lips
while you still have it within you
to kiss anything beautiful


There is a crash
in the air  we are breathing
in the oxygen coursing through
our veins, because our waste is
lifting into the space around us
and soaking into all of our pores
and lungs, until the build up
spills out of our eyelids
and the beds of our fingernails


We are an orchestra of rattling bones
teetering in the muscle
that tear with a flinch
it is the only music left for us
while the earth is rippling
beneath our heels
moving to the sound
of our breakdown


Our eyes are filling up
with what our hearts are shedding
the mess spreading out
to clot in our nerve endings
and shut down our pupils
but we still throw our heads back
our eyes twitching
for signs of a passing storm
our minds left expecting
a kind daylight to move toward
while we have long since
collapsed into the soil


Our limbs limp
bones brittle
driven from their sockets
the mess bleeding
from our lips and ears
our skin left a dirty film sealing in
our unidentifiable insides
until it is too thin to withhold
the chaos that has been rising
from behind our caked-on smiles