Martyr

The walls and corridors remain
In flaking fever, breathing sorely;
No feast for the watching eye -
Shirt-sleeve drained in chlorine.

You string the wounded floor to sing
To the contracting muscle in your chest.
Littered glass retracts like a sigh:
You walk the hall in muffled echo.

This is my home. A different sun
Spits its sour air onto the roof:
The tiles are your fingers,
Chopped and dusted. Brown terracotta.

A steel face. Herr Aufseher,
Your badge in my withering palm.
Wrong room, Herr Aufseher -
A reflection in the doorframe.

Thread, blackthorn. Forest edge
Stands dead in the last day of autumn.
A white-eyed fox across in the ravine
Sniffs at your mighty silence.

Slimy emeralds by the lake
That cling onto rotting apathetic weeds
You thread into your overcoat.
Royal, you’re no king.

Hissing convictions, vipers in your hair,
Cracked porcelain fingertips.
I will clean the ashes and metal shavings
From your soldered throat.

Honest scalpel and lying hands.
I will fix your painful perfection,
Your metal soles that nest maggots
In creases of a fluttering cotton mind.

You do not own this place.
I know where all the floorboards creak,
I taste new bitter presence in the dust.
No foot crosses the doorstep twice.

Mine, mine, Herr Aufseher,
I will trap you in this hall
And rip your black eyes out.