beat up

Never got so beat up that I couldn't see life
from the barrel of hell -
        shiny blue and wreaking of sobriety,
we fuck in solitary,
from behind confinement
walls made from my own fears
where she cries
and I lie
about the night.
And besides, it was not so long ago that the tears
were mine and the lies hers,
but we said we would and we did, sort of ...
most of the time (it would seem), though in the end
like a good book ruined by the last page,
forcing you to throw the whole text
into a raging fire I've set in the room
I rented for more than I can afford
with a belief that somehow
everything will work out the way it always does,
except when i've burned the book
and the fire has leapt to the curtains,
now my bed is engulfed,
but I'll wait here,
until the fire gets me,
because i've been cold too long
waiting
for my blood to boil
with passion and compassion,
reaction and love
this fire can leap to my legs
and char my bones ebony
with fine white ash on the floor,
waiting for someone to trace
the name over the veins
of my dust so that my feathers
will bloom like the first crocus
in still icy spring
breaks the ground where
the phoenix gets its life
after the fires have been set on the forests of time.
I just hope the smoke doesn't get me
before this fire does.