The Anatomy of Self-Awareness

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My dear self-awareness,

Mortal blade or blessing?


To drift in lush, milky oblivion,

Or congealed, soul-curdling truth?

To veil my eyes in opaline corsets,

Or pry open with rusted curettes?


Ever ensnared by legions within,

I carve into my marrow, 

flay a pound of my seething flesh

And wonder — Who wielded the dagger?


My rogue doppelgänger traipses,

World-defiling, world-pollinating,

While I waste in mildew’s attic—

A child-wolf ghost, sealed in centuries, 

Peering through a keyhole.


The pawn scripts the gambit.

The puppet wrings blood from its strings.

The sinner etches her name

Into the hanging tree

Where the rope licks her throat in embrace.


I’m the gargoyle, leering in the looking glass,

Inveigling my wretched reflection —

If I have wings, doesn’t that make me … a seraphim?


This spindly fly trap of a nervous system

Siphons venom, suckles treacle-scars —

A vial of poison wrapped in a bowtie,

A Victorian gaslight doused in silk lies.


(But venom and silk burn eventually, I hope?)





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