LAURA KARNIVA

Who are your friends?

I hear you ask,

I do not remember,

For I have none.

 

I once knew a girl,

She laughed like me.

We shared the same electricity.

I fell in love with music,

With the brine beneath our heels,

But she sailed away on a monster,

The darkest waves conceal.

 

I once knew a boy,

We welcomed the dawn,

A belly full of poison,

On his head a crown of horns,

He’ll drink himself to death.

Mulling over that vile taste,

The wilted belly of his mother,

Is such a pitiful waste.

 

I once knew a group,

I was their leader;

A human patchwork sewn together.

They frayed apart,

The languid lot,

Collapsing from their sacred knot.

Listen to the blackbirds sing,

There is a song for everything.

 

Place me onto a velvet couch,

And let me sleep for a million years,

Until the cracks within my skin,

Fade away and disappear.

I don’t need a threadbare substance,

Just this hand of thorns,

To prick every stranger that I meet,

Again to be reborn.

Swell a rash that itch and bleeds,

To spread inside the holy house.

Corrupting all those thoughts I have,

And cannot live without.

I left a peace of me in my dream,

To be reborn; sleep, sleep, sleep.

I am my imagination,

I am the only one.

 

Who are your friends?

I don’t know.

I used to have them,

A long time ago.