Dinner With Bentham

The Howl

Compositor: Sam Porter

The scalpel splits the silicone as I nurse a fading lover without a pulse.
Your love was a Trojan Horse.
Making arrangements for entombments of these strangers.
These movements of my heart inside my chest, each pulse inflicts a fracture.

Dark waters fill my lungs as I am struggling to breathe.
I’m choking on your grief.
I am the afterbirth of sorrow, praying I don’t wake up tomorrow.
God damn, Christina, how was I supposed to carry on like this?

When the only way to stop falling in love...
“traffic stops on madison”

You’re body was a coal mine
We’re coughing and sick
Lost men gasp for clarity
their lungs still black with soot-

Now I am betting on canaries and you’re mourning in your filth.
My head is buried in my hands.
You’re buried in your guilt.

The forceps, they’ve cleared the way.
I’m steadied now to face the waves.
But my legs are bound. Your love was a sinking anchor.
Plunging through the darkest blues, past arms outstretched in beryl hues
But now the lake swims in my chest. And it’s pulse evicts the raptures.

Dark waters filled my lungs as I am struggling to breathe.
Nine hundred feet beneath.
I am the afterbirth of sorrow, and if I don’t wake up tomorrow,
Perhaps, Christina, you may find your heart in the depths of Lake Michigan.

When the only way to stop falling in love...
“traffic stopped on madison”
`
You’re body was a coal mine
We’re coughing and sick
Lost men gasp for clarity
their lungs still black with soot

I am a wounded wolf that’s howling
and you mean nothing to me now.
but I swear I’ll kill that mother-fucker
before the sun goes down.

This is my voice. Hear me now, hear me now.
You were my voice. Hear me now.

Sit and wait for your wave to roll in
You’re stuck in your skin waiting for death to cleanse your soul
You’ve got to hold on now, you’ve got to hold on.
Dig your graves, shake the dead.

Empty eyes turn away from the pacts of the living to dig your graves, shake the dead.