A Room at the Hospital

A dulcet pale beauty
We all wander our own grim cities
Haunted by the ghosts
Above and below ground
Where is my secret door in the bottom of a stairwell?
Stone landmarks
To guide wayward angels
Back to payday surprises
On empty wharf
And crowded warehouse
Where is my path back to the right arms?
Movement
All limbs intact
But teeth doing their own slow rot
I cut myself beneath the skin
So that the scars don't show at all
But I have to keep a room at the hospital
Where I mark every failure on a wall
That's never quite big enough
Where is my hooded undertaker to guide the thread through the needle?
Paths in a park
Leading to a lake with children half in
The parents pull them half out every night
There are too many eyes in this park
There is too much revolution in this chalk pigeon show
Where the mansions glide back from the water's edge
Until only mausoleums make pinpoint steeples
Where is my choking inspiration, my auburn bitterness?
Mumbled in heart shaped expletives
As all derelicts do on city outskirts
We went the whole fifteen rounds
My sight blocked by the blood
Fists pounding tenderized meat
Always returning to the same points
Where is my savior to declare a standing eight count?
How lightly we say lovesick
Without acknowledging the cancer can grow in any of us
But some cancer doesn't kill you outright
It just eats out the best part of you
Where you see traffic part sideways
And the angels retreat
To leave you on your own
To face your accusers
When there's nothing left inside you