s w e e t m o r n i n g b e l l;

Tick-tock, tick-tock

Fifty rats infect the clock;

How they got there,

I don’t know.

The nuns in the corner told me so.

Diseases, diseases

And all sorts of sneezes.

Children wake;

And ache

And ache

And ache;

Why don’t you spare some change?

It’s all for their sake.

Mumps and bumps

And tiny little lumps

Cover my head, I’d rather be dead.

Hurry, hurry;

No time to worry!

This plague is bound to spread.

Tick-tock, tick tock

Dance fucker, I’ll make you talk;

Smog and bacteria

Blocking the atmosphere;

But have no fear,

The Monsters.

Are.

Here.

Choking to sputter

How dare you stutter.

You’ve got the vodka, I’ve got the virgin.

All that’s left is the cardiac surgeon;

Shiny tools fill the empty schools,

Dirty halls and a pay-phone call.

Mommy, I want to go home. The children, they swallowed my doll.

Tick-tock, tick-tock

I’ll break down your door with an electrical shock;

Will you win, or will you lose?

I guess that’s up to me to chose.

Those broken hotel hallways

Echoed in short with my father’s heartbeat.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Crash.

He used to sing me to sleep with blackbirds,

Fluttering to the lovely sound of babies crying.

His old shirt, covered in vomit and bile

Was my favorite.

The plaid pattern,

The sweet-smelling alcohol stains on the collar.

The sleeves were only half-eaten by Mama.

He used to dance with me,

Through the puddles of urine on the linoleum floor.

Told me I was Daddy’s girl,

And then swallowed regurgitated pills he found on the counter.

Some days

He would take beautiful women into his room.

I would hear painful screams and gasps for air.

And then we had dinner by bug-zapper light.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Bu-bump.

Fuck.

Daddy would take me to the basement

Where carbon-dioxide overpowered the atmosphere

And it was cold.

So cold.

We played ring-around-the-rosie.

And just like the song;

We all

Fell

Down.

But Daddy never got back up.

So there I lay,

On the steaming radiator

In the backroom

Where the roaches never sleep

In Daddy’s old shirt;

The one Mama drowned him in.

My favorite.

From Prison to Hospital we sang,

A song of sweet depravity

From which your lungs bled all over my mother’s new carpet.

And I could have sworn I saw God

As you convulsed in the field of wildflowers.

“Follow the lights,” He said.

“Away from the gas chamber.”

So we ran, you and I.

Bile coursing through my veins,

As you coursed through my heart.

A lost cause when I remembered you were raised by geishas on the rise,

Hidden under streetlights

Were the men in uniform couldn’t find you.

Your fingers like needles on my skin;

Wonderful, threatening needles

Prodding my hips

 Like nails in my feet.

But then the apocalypse came

Filling the air with cancer.

I couldn’t find you in that tunnel,

Where your voice echoed through the brick walls

And shattered my ribcage.

The voice you used to say my name,

To scream, “The neighborhood is bleeding!”

Before they severed your vocal chords,

And now all you can say is, “Phone Call.”

But I don’t know what that means.

So I just pretend it means “You’re all I need”, instead.

I hope.

I hope.

Ever since then, the scar tissue has just been building

Into a mass of discontent,

Where blood never clots

And I can no longer see the sun.

At least not the way you see it.

Melting, instead of burning.

But I finally found you,

And while I held your sweet face in my frost-covered hands

And you cried tears of Amatoxin down my throat.

It was all worth it,

My body being doused in gasoline

And engulfed in flames

Just to see your eyes sparkle the way they do in the light

One last time.

So please, darling, remember

That when the lights flicker,

I just want you to feel the way I used to make you feel.