i've written my confessions on flash paper and parlor tricks

i've written my confessions with bath salts and stagnant water

i'm a sinner
  i am sin
creeping through the hall of souls
the golden feast of death that churns
  white leaves of passion
tight against the walls

i have seen throughout the hall
  the various forms of torture they condone

i have heard the whispers of the ancient ones
  which i cannot repeat

and down at the foot of the abyss
  a lost traveler rests a moment longer

along the edge of the chasm
  strange runes are carved of a forgotten hermetic order

in the chemist's lab
  a sad girl learns to love herself again
with chemicals and a book of alchemy

out on the barren fields
  giant factories turn out the stuff of dreams

the machine kabbalah grows

     ~~..

and this is what i see slowly passing in the waters:

i see a riderless swing creak back and forth
  to the breeze of a gentle spring day

i see basketballs and baseballs and shoes and waterguns
  abandoned in the grass

i see a schoolbus drive past without stopping

i hear the evil one
  laughing and taunting
  and slurring and haunting
and " bitch " he said
" childhood's over. "

and i see a starving dog push his empty food bowl across the kitchen
whimpering to someone who left a long time ago

and the wind slowly turns the pages
  of a children's book in the gutter

         ..~~

don't let me die in a room without windows
  darkened by something expected
no
  don't let me die the slow death of waiting
and don't let it come too soon

don't let me regret anything that i've done
  don't let me cry out or god damn

and don't let my last memory
  fall back upon the cries of leah hirsig in the night

..

the next page is empty

  and afterwards: nothing

and i don't know why but that scares me