stale cigarettes

*earthworms have five hearts*

red kettle on stove 

silver water bubbling 

like the metallic blood beneath lucifers world

he stood tall and long 

like a tree of red pine 

burning your skin with molten black coals

 buries you ten feet deep in soil 

aged whiskey and stale cigarette breath

whirling you in black ashtray

and when you dare speak!

he takes you by the bud

 lights you out like stars

eating the manilla bones out flesh

 toes sticking out as evergreens

and i

 the archaeologist shoveled your bones out the graveyard

stored in old wine bottles 

and black crows' beaks

 gluing your molded bones

 with eight jars of clover honey

eating the maggots and moss off flamed flesh

yanking the stapples out your ribs

and you crawl back to his garden

like earthworms in compost 

headless rotting in sunlight 

him cutting your flesh--- the main course

burying guts in his garden 

gleaming into a tree of fig and peach

eating every morsel of your fuzzy skin 

sucked dry to brown pit 

body pale on pebbled pavement

but you still crawl 

 you my darling are one of his little earthworms

with five hearts he took two!

lifeless as white winter 

helpless like wounded deer

and he smiles a chilling grin

that entangles the spines of every black oak