Seriously want to spit

but I'll swallow it

I'm tied to be fit

a practiced masochist

With a sadistic twist 

he wrapped me up

wrists tied like licorice

Cotton Candy Daddy

I'm a honeybee trapped in your mix

Whipped, dipped, and wrapped 

washed up and rinsed 

He flipped the script lickety split

Sick shit was bananas.

That man was holy rollin 

no sin wholly forgiven

showboating and gloating 

he cut me out paper thin 

Dissected, strung, and pinned

A fabricated faberge doll

fake shit-eating grin

pasted above a plastic appliqué

chin

Made me a man-manipulated mannequin 

A slim-skinned harlequin hardly akin

Turned into a crazed charlatan starring in a brazen charade on parade 

Knocked back like a shot of sloe gin     

Slow-momentum livin in a momentary masquerade 

Whoa.

Woe.

Foe, we'll go Rouchambeau quid pro quo, well-paid in fool's gold

Touché, move well played.

As the loquacious façade fades 

So smirkish sneer degrades to dazed chagrin

I mutter under burdened breath

what utter humiliation

Plundered dummy rendered useless remains on etherial display

Esoteric yet prophetic prosthesis 

cryptic prognosis is pain

Pathetic rhetoric blundered

disgruntled dismantled and dismayed

I be thee befuddled buffoon

Embarrassed red ass on a babboon 

Awkward elephant in the room

Doomed. 

My marred heart beaten, betrayed, and flayed 

barely arrythmically beating

slightly concealed under sleeve 

aorta peeking, grieving, 

leaking lost love steadily

I'm screaming unbelieving

still meaning to leave with dignity

All feeling dying silently

Crying and bleeding 

needing cauterizing, suturing Nurturing wounded pride barely alive

Topsy turvy life a carnival ride.

Through smoke and mirrors

I face my fears

reflection blurred by tears

still 

My Own Face

Simple slight of hand

all's surely a sham

Placed last in a race to save face.

Damn.

Illusion was grand

Delusions were grandeur. 

My personal perceptional faux pas.

Pimped and pandered

Self-esteem stripped raw

Pride covered in squalor like a dirty urinal stall

Squandered all that mattered

So sputtering, mad as a hatter

I move too slowly to draw

Soley willed by Murphy's law  

Southpaw aimed, shot to kill

My soul will go on. 

But 

Alone 

I 

fall

Love. 

Same number of syllables and letters as:

Fuck.

Shit.

Dick.

Cunt.

Damn.

Fool.

Lame.

Talk.

Lies.

Fake.

Dead.

Stop.

Love. 

Game.

Over.

Stranger than Fiction

I slyly peer a 30-something woman from across the room. 

A sibylline beauty,  her features are mysterious, ominous. Her profoundly green-hazel eyes are icey, almost jaded. 

She scans a cell phone screen superficially. After a pause, navigates her index finger around the tiny display. The rough, callused digit delicately twirls like a rudimentary ballet. 

A smoldering cigarette barely dangles from her bottom lip, almost completely vertical. She exhales thickly through nostrils; shrouded by a veil of smoke.

Who is this portentious prophetess? 

Vaguely familiar to me; profile a shadowy archetype from amorphous dreams. Maybe a moonlit figure I casually noted in passing. Perhaps, we were acquainted in a past life. What an annoying conundrum.

This female creature fascinates me.

I want to ask her name, her interests. I ponder her potential hopes for the future, aspirations, epiphanies. Could she contribute wisdom or pertinent information? A flurry of potentials and possibilities circumnavigate my skull.

Pandora's open box.

I pinch my thigh to stop the sensory overload. I clamp my eyes shut; slowly re-open them to slits. 

She is staring, stoically, back at me. 

It seems as though my perception plays a rather cruel trick. Chest tight, breath shallow, I realize. The stranger I struggle to recognize is my own reflected image.    

Who am I? Where has the time gone? What have I become? Where will I go from here? 

My immediate reply: deafening silence.