Everything that I did echoed my secret desires. My flat was empty except for the artwork of the spiritless, the wood floor swept away for a single bed, a small walk-in freezer, and various plumbing utilties. The only light came from wall to wall windows that stared into the back of the building next door. Though on some days the sun would slant and bend for me, reflecting off the rainpipes, and blaze in through my windows in bands of thick, flicking white light, showing to the eye the motes of dust, dancing around my Art.

What was thought as basic to survival, wasn't necessarily what I alouted my body. I ate what I had to, enough to stay alive and perpetrate movement. But the extent of my being was in the Art, cruel patches of misused cells beautifully arranged on my floor in all sorts of decomposition. There were arms and legs and pieces of hair and nail and all other sorts of canvas' from which to work with. I kept the blood from spilling by patching their wounds with tar that I picked up monthly from the Home Depot down the street. My prizes were held to the floor with aged gravel, rubber burnt into the wood, and stagnant blood. This was what drove me, then.

Keeping the boy alive however, was what now drove me. Though I still collected seeds for the planting and harvest, he reigned over the forest in magisterial beauty. His unnatural blonde hair, cut in front of his eyes in a surrated edge, hid soft blue eyes like two exotic oases in the middle of a desert. Small freckles powdered his face and the various nooks his body hid.

I had seen this treat in many clubs over the winter vacation, his innocent face hiding something that only I could see; the way his eyes would study the bodies around him, sizing up the skin that he would break yet only coming so close to his inner-desire as minute bite marks. We were the same, both preying on the weak to satisfy some relentless hunger that gnawed like nicotine addiction.

Yes, his eyes were what gave him away in the beginning. When they fell on me, I could feel the same lust I had felt many times before with hundreds of men and women, each so exquisite in their own way that I had to begin to wonder what it was like to split their bodies with my fingers.

When I came to him, sliding in the booth where he sat, and whispered what I wanted from his body, he nodded and followed. And it was easy to let him fall, him with hair as white as ashen skin, him with a knot on the back of his neck, him with track marks up his arms, and him that stopped and smiled when he first came and saw my garden. But no, I had a new Art to practice on him.

The only thought he had now was of the smell, but even that I knew could sometimes be exotic to him, head half drooping when I stooped between his legs and bled over his sex. I melted Valium and Xanax in a spoon and filled a wasted syringe with the concoction, before lifting his arm and plunging the brew home. Slowly pushing on the walls of his body with the needle, sinking and then pulling back so I could see his blood catch fire to the white solution in the syringe, then inside him again. Later I would press the metal to my own arm and exchange more vital fluids with him. Our blood flowed in the same veins; he was my child now, diluted junkie, and hopeful love.

The floors of my apartment were clean, I kept the blood from spilling by patching their wounds with tar. My prizes held to the floor with aged gravel, rubber burnt into the wood and stagnant blood. 'It's a forest,' the boy would whisper. And; 'Yes my sweetness,' I would reply. 'It's our own lovely forest.' Then I would hold his blonde head to my chest or place my own head in his lap, and stare at the invisible stains on our bodies.

Yesterday I let the ropes that bound him to the chair free, and he slumped against me, muscles so relaxed and weak with malnourishment, that they couldn't even lift his own fallen weight. I carried him to my bed and held the covers about him, while I fed him from the same spoon I melted his medicine. The soup left oil condensation on his lips and melted his mouth soft, so that I could taste the chicken broth when I knelt even closer, and kissed his open mouth.

My boy would whisper in his sleep, drug-induced murmurs that I would record to tape. When he lay next to me I would play his voice, so that he would whisper meaningless words in my ear while I slept with a hand on his sunken cheek.

I would stop giving him the medicine, because I knew it didn't matter anymore. He wouldn't leave me now, we both knew this to be the absolute truth. His love - and mine - had grown in the space of several months. His fate was as decomposed as the forest around him, the arms jetting from the wood, some fingers tipped in black, some torso's so sad with the loss of life that they twisted around and fell apart like glass; in the sun they were tears of skin.

The paper was green when I gave it to him, slipping my fingers into his mouth to administrate the acid. But soon the small wafer dissolved, and an hour later when he had waken from his sleep, his eyes glowed with revelation. He turned his head, with a new strength and stared out over the flat, with his mouth open, his eyes wide. I sat next to him and stroked his head while he lost himself in the tumbling forest.

We stayed that way all night, hand moving over the hair I kept reapplying bleach to all these months, and those wide eyes… so lost in themselves. In the middle of the night he had gotten up, his bones cracking as he stumbled into the middle of the room, and collapsed in relief, with an exhale of breath.

Then morning, and day came through the windows and he spoke; 'It's so beautiful… the lights are dancing for me. Motes of dancing dust in the sun…' he choked back and smiled up at me with those perfect lips so drawn and white. He smiled when I came to him and cupped his face. I kissed his lips then, and could feel the tickle of blood beneath his skin; when I came away however, it was gone.

We would lay in the sun as it came across the windowsill. Your body would be trapped under mine; it would require breath from my mouth to breathe and skin from my bones to animate. You were my puppet.. The hands only caressed when I told them to move, the lips smiled only when I pressed my own up against them and pressed upward, making you smile as I kissed you.

You were the light in my eyes, the force which moved my existence. But now you have begun to shun me. The organic decay process, usually referred to as 'death' has moved into your body. It now tickles just underneath your outer layer, suckling at the skin, creating caves and recesses where before there were none.

"Where are you going?" I would whisper over your body, provoking the air around me for an answer. Silence.

The frost outside my window deepens, it takes hold like crystalline Morning Glories. It blurs the view outside, making the too-close-brick building next door appear festive with reds and whites. Somewhere in the background the neighbors have left a television on and I have heard that a cold front is passing through. I can't feel my fingertips, and I hold you close in vague, simple attempts to suck the last of the warmth from your week old body.

You're too cold.

The game has almost ended. The false promise of an eternity with you, the lie you sold to me as I dangled precious breath from your lungs and slit your eyes until they opened wide and bled like tears that I knew you would make me shed. The eyes were the most important part of you, the soulless dark, a bottomless coffee color that made me want to sink into your head, drowning. You've made me a fool, dead boy. You've made me a fool in my own house.

I push you from me, instantly regretting the move as I hear you crack on the floor. The bed fills quickly with the coldness, and I turn away from the room and all of its treasures, from your body now clustered at the floor of my bed, like some patient dog. I twist the sheet around me and fall into a frightened sleep. I dream of shadows chasing after me, and myself chasing after something else that I can only see in blurs as it moves around the next corner. I wake with sweat on my arms and realize that the bed is empty.

So I gather your body up and take you into the center of the room, where the Blonde from before sits crumpled, like a discarded piece of clothing. I lay you next to him, your hair coming out as I twist your head down and wrap the other Blonde's arms around you. I sink and lay myself on the floor, staring up at the ceiling through fingers that aren't my own. Pieces of art now blotting my eyes for me as I begin to cry and curl around and around.

The nights are always endless. I can never find someone to stay for long, a gentle man or woman to come and hold me the way my two beauties are now holding each other. Nothing lasts forever I suppose, and everything with worth and substance just becomes a work of Art in the end.

Reaching out into the darkness and finding some random hand to curl around, breaking the tired flesh and cracking the bone as I try to squeeze some life into it; my life is futile. I can hear the glue that holds the art to the floor begin to tear, the black adhesive ripping the polish off of my wood floors; my life is futile. I hold the old waste to my face, hiding behind the sweet smell of decomposition, sinking my mouth around the bits of flesh that hang loose; my life is futile.

The night closes around me, crying and screaming into this lifeless hand.

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I pressed it against her anus, letting the soft pink skin sink and suckle the tip of the empty violin bow. The horse hair would have gotten in the way, making for a situation that lacked the aesthetic beauty I wanted to create with this canvas. Her mouth was black with lipstick, slightly smeared on the left corner. Her eyes had been left and stuck open in order to wither from the great window in my efficiency, that even now blinded her with the shifting midday sun.

I began to mockingly play her organs to the piece she played in concert just a week ago. My movements could be seen just under the skin, poking and piercing the back, strumming along the pink insides until it rubbed raw and bled from the inside, out.

Her shoulders were always pointed and sharp and to the point of perfection when she played; the pageboy hair cut frozen around her as if she had bruised half her face; painted features dark. Skirt twirling so that I would zone out into the fabric like in a cheap B movie - the doctor spinning his umbrella to catch your minds eye.

She was perfect. I had to have her.

Now I wanted to imitate that perfection, make her body open to allow unlimited access to her work. She was even more beautiful now; the sounds her body could make bordered on maddening. The mouth an instrument in itself, slightly muted by the lack of tongue but nevertheless complete in its role as musician. Her organs ground like expensive meat, soft and supple. I was tempted not to devour her, no matter the impact it would hold on my 'band."

I knelt in my forest of bodies and sang along to the rhythm that filled the air, staring at the sun until I felt my eyes to be on par with the girls. When I closed them to take away the brilliance, my mind so drunk on power thought the arms and legs and strung hair were beginning to dance with me, my joints moving with what was left of theirs.

I only talked to her once before I took her in with me, but only to watch her lips, to listen to the crescendo they would make later, a test ride for my ears. She asked what I did for a living, and when I told her I was a travel agent she asked if I had ever been to Japan, and when I told that no I hadn't, but have always wanted to she agreed to come home with me.

Pressing myself on her back now, forcing her to arch with me, I get an almost instant erection, and try to control it by changing the beat to 3/4 but it doesn't work, and I'm left slowly leaking on her leg. It wouldn't bother me as much if I didn't already have a set plan for this girl. The one thing I couldn't stand was an unprepared mistake. However, the music had brought me to a new kind of plateau, so when I drew the bow from her, and sunk into the torn insides we both decided that it was time to change the music again.

I left her body glued to the floor while I slept so that when the dawn came through the reflection of the building next door the only noise in the air was that of silence.

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I've been here for days. I can never keep time when I get like this, I only know that days have indeed passed for the sun has bathed my forest in odd slants several times now, casting light the dark spots to pale gray. Nothing ever seems to warn me of the withdrawals my mind goes through, they come task-heavy and mindless; the worst possible combination for any virus or ailment. Glitches like this usually last for several days, weeks, or until the time of departure. I never know which will come first.

When I open my eyes it's too late in the day to sleep, still too early to be awake. The ceiling offers me little solace, it being a starch layer of peeling paint that at times snows down on top of me, a makeshift winter in the deep south. My eyes fall to the walls, but they pretend to stretch wide and then low until my vision corrects itself and the red bricks slowly begin their retreat back into normality. I twist and the bed sheets are so rough that in places they have begun to reopen young scars, ones that I had just written on my chest and arms and legs so that now I am exposed red and raw, gaping under the sheets like a bleeding lover.

But then something rises from below my perception. A small gangly forest. The trees. And then a small metal pipe, the remains of opium sticking to the inside of the bowl. And then a tray of weeds, the green mixed with strips of dead skin.

I begin to roll a joint and hope to forget the sudden pain of sobriety, of being awake and alone once again. My hands shake as I twist the rolling paper, and it tears and empties over me, so that I have to recollect the pieces from between the hairs on my chest. I've neglected to feed myself again, left my body exposed to this self mutilation, and I can see it beginning to show in the jagged hips that now serve as shallow graves for the unlit pieces of hash.

Even my art has lost its shine. All around me it has begun to decay, the skin to fold and wrinkle like grapes left to ferment in the sun, their color fading from jungle green to deep purple. In places the skin has slid free of restraints and left the bone exposed and naked, jutting and breaking. I usually cut the trees down to stumps when they begin to rot beyond beauty, but lately I've enjoyed the sickening smell of curdled flesh.

I get up and begin to walk east, towards the sink that balances on rickety metal pipes. Above it hangs a spotted mirror, crooked. I can't look at my reflection because it always sends my stomach bubbling; the space where the mirror has cracked, where my right eye should have been, is the only thing I see as I fill an empty glass with water. Physical beauty could grace me as much as it wanted before I knew where to look for it in me.

My body sits on the floor and stares through the window at the building next to mine, hoping that somehow the walls would melt and I would be able to see down onto Canal St.. I lean back so that the small of my back rests on the snapped version of Piano's. My drink tastes metallic like street corners, like blood.

I dont' remember falling asleep, but then I dream and this is what unfolds, like black and white figures living on an artists sketchbook. I've brought this one back home, and I'm the mouth and eyes of another, talking to myself. This doesn't make sense, but it's a dream and I never understand the concepts.

"I wrote about this place," my mouth works. The real me just stands in the doorway as I lay among the prostrating constructs, deep within the forest.

"What?"

"I wrote about a forest like this, victims turned into art."

"You like my art?"

"Yes."

Then I am there, my lips locked on my own. Our hands meeting and arms stretching above us as we fall in love. Outside on the hard wood floor, in a grove of beauty we explore the bodies around us, and our own. And then the me I know emerges, and he kisses me as my mouth fills with blood, and I struggle to breath around his tongue as he guts me. My swan song is a sound a drowning man makes right before death, choking on violence.

Quickly gravity sinks back into my veins and I open my eyes. It's night and I can't remember falling asleep. The glass of water is cracked, and the shards cut into the palm of my hand. Burnt sand stinging my cheek as I brush a length of hair out of my eyes, the dream emptying out of my head as the blood slides.

Then, I decide, that it is time to go out.

The sky is a dead television station on mute, the neon lights of downtown New Orleans perfecting the illusion of digital night. Pink and blue walls greet me as I step outside and watch as a wave of white trash comes down the opposite side of the street, screaming at each other in broken English. Above me there is a spider web of pipes and cables stretching high above the pavement.

The Pink Blossom is lively, the crowds gliding against each other like two lovers, the skin sweaty and black and red. The booths are all taken, and the bar is a mass of shouting voices. On stage there are two old beauties riveting against each other, hips so old I'm afraid that they will shatter against the pole like the glass still in my hand. Their eyes stare vacant at the pounding speakers, their act something of a ritual by this point in their dying lives. No one is paying them any attention, the area around the stage a sliver of empty floor.

I sit down at a small table next to the stage and watch as their skin seems to beat in time with the snaggletooth of bass. I don't have a drink, and lean back and stare at the lights above me, the closest thing to stars I've ever seen.

Outside the television station begins to flicker and the sky opens to a downpour of rain. It's as if the sky were broken and slanted, coming down in silver streaks of white noise. The crowds that once ran on the streets and sidewalks quickly begins to part and find shelter from the acidic water. A surge of human begins to push against me, letting in the people from the streets, and the empty areas are slowly filled.

"Ah," a man behind me says. "The beauty of the rain."

I turn and watch him stagger against his friend. Their hands suggest more than friendship as they grope drunkenly against each others back in support.

On stage the two strippers begin to part and stare in wonder at the falling sky, the hiss of acid against cement. This is a rare occasion, for rain seldom falls in the streets, the clouds barely making it across the hot pavement of the interstate. The world seems to stare out the darkened windows in amazement.

I have to use the restroom, so I put my hand on the shoulder of the boy next to me for leverage to stand, the glass cutting into his soft fabric, his voice almost lost in the density of the crowd.

"H'y Baby!"

And I turn, half expecting it to be someone I know, instead of just a local face, hidden behind a thick sheen of sweet, bobbing up and down to the music. My hand is still on his shoulder, the small glass still lacerating. He's high on something, his eyes dialated, and speech almost incomprehensible.

"I aven't see you fo' w'ile, Baby!"

"I don't know who you are."

"Das ai'ight I tell ya! Name's Beggah', Baby. I been watchin' you fo' whi' use da see ya all ta time."

"I really don't know you."

His black hair is long and cuts like scissors in front of his dark eyes, so that I can't look him in the eye when he speaks. He wore a black jumpsuit, several sizes too big, pinned and painted with day-glow. He was a local scene one-hit wonder, soon to be wasted.

I make a pass around him, dislodging glass from body.

"We'e ya goin', Baby?!"

"To take a piss."

His face looks like one of happiness. But I turn too quickly to dreading another response, turned into the dark throbbing calamity around myself, and let it pulls me along toward the bathroom door right in time to see the kids slick sweating face bobbing along behind me.

I turn into a stall and release myself, aiming into the brown muck below.

"C'mon Ma' jus' a quic' quic'"

The kid had taken residence in the booth next to mine, his foot slowly arching up as if to signel, as if to ask again, as if to let everything else in the bathroom what he wanted, from who, right now.

tap. tap.

"Why don't you come in here and do it you little bitch."

I lean back against the wall so that my legs are between the shit pool, and my penis hangs limply outside the fly of my pants. I unlock the door to my stall with the toe of my shoe, and the boy dodges in, his eyes suddenly shifty, nervous, paranoid.

"Come on then," I taunt with my right hand.. "It's what you want."

The boy smiles knowingly, like a kid on christmas morning; or a dog for a treat. He moved closer so that my hand could cup his jaw, direct him between the shite and piss. With my other hand I gently press him down on me, locking him into place. And there it went, the boy nothing more than cheap black jumpsuit and red mouth. I stared down at him, waiting for him to stare up at me so that I might catch a glimpse to the color of his eyes.

Anything but blue eyes, anything but that horrible comflagration of hell-fire.

And when he did stare back up at me, his shiny face reaveled that they were blue; blue like summer sky. Like the ocean blue I once sailed across. That I once too had to brave those conflounded and terbulent waves. And with the beating of the club around us, I sawed my right hand up his bleeding jaw, letting it slide along his pretty, slick, face until I was swimming in his depths, swimming in the dark waters of his head. I did this until the ocean turned dark and cold, and the stars could be seen rippling on the waters calm surface.

I wrap him in his large black jumpsuit, and carry him through the still crowd. We make our leave out the back exit, into a small white alley. Out in the rain I put my own hood to protect my skin from the toxicity of the water, but leave his down.

The rain seems to dodge me as I walk down the street, a gray shadow lost in the unnatural haze of rain. But it doesn't seem to miss my friend, the kid. It eats into his oceans darkness and fill it with light, until nothing remains but a pale, white desert.

That's how I live, I said. That's how I get buy, not quite a ghost, but almost forgotten.

---------------------------------

I cut myself and rub the scars when I'm upset.

There was this opium dream you were in, when my mind was rocking gently to its sweet perfume and I lay prone on the floor of Great Dane's apartment. My mind lost touch with my brain stem and I drifted without feeling for an endless myriad of minutes turned eternity.

I have framed your beauty in my mind for later discretion. You've always been there, a Polaroid picture in my memory, edges curled with misuse and picture stained. It is easy to close my eyes even now, and lose myself staring at your immobile, naked body; then to summon fantasy and have it wrap and restrain you, hanging you from the ceiling, a blank canvas for our creativity to unfold upon; then to slowly slip from reality and fall into place beside you. It was almost second nature for my unconscious to flash these images as I slept.

The dream unfolds.

It started with my lips on your neck. Sweet, small kisses that brings the realization of your nakedness and helplessness to your thoughts once more so that you begin to dance in avoidance Your hips sway as I move in closer. With your arms and legs locked both above and below, this is the only grace left at your disposal, a lagged and jerky dance that entices as well as disregards. We curve into each other and lock, my sex holding place in the narrow crook between your legs, stilling your movements.

You are tense. I watch your jaw move as I sink into you, biting slowly but with exact homing-precision, as if a weeks worth of work had been poured and smoldered into this moment. You attempt to scream and I stop intrigued, soaking up every detail, every piece of Art you produce. I've muted you for this, filled your throat forever with old cement mix and tar, then bound your mouth with black electrical tape. This is what you've always wanted, your silence. All that aching poetry has lead you here, to this moment, where we will complete you; turn those simple thoughts inside out and give them the sentience they need to take control and reshape your body to their liking, and selfishly mine.

Then it's over, and you are limp in my arms. This, I take, is your signal to proceed. Drawing the blood until it laces my mouth and pulling you closer from behind, the rigging that binds you creaks and I notice that it's the only sound in the room.

With my hands pressed against your back I outline the shape of your crooked spine and in my minds eye refigure it erect as a pole. I wear thick leather gloves, old razors I decorated my skin with in previous years, have been sewn into the tips. With my mouth feverishly on the wound in your neck, I begin to slowly skim the surface around your shoulders, peeling the outer layers like an orange, then like a hunter dig into the easy, soft spots that randomly dot your back. Ripping away pieces of muscle, cutting the tender sinews that held you erect when you had a reason to walk, and skewering any random bits of tissue that hinder my approach, I search and feel the cutting edges of your spine and, quickly and delicately, snap the cord that held you to this world. I feel your heart stop, start again, then stop without another sound.

Your malady of living, the born-disfunction that has plagued you since birth like a sickening virus has be plucked and defragmented.

The dream contorts and folds back like a closing envelope. I wake.

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-"What do you think of my eyes?" the corpse spoke. His breath smelled like a half packed bowl of rotting apples, an intoxicating perfume that took me a step closer towards where he sat, propped against my wall. -"I don't know what you mean," I reply. My eyes wound their way down his naked body like mountain climbers, from the hills of his shoulders to the bluffs of his collarbone, and the deep valleys in his chest. My vision stopped to rest on one of the corpses nipples, the one where I bit just too deep, and torn the last time I slept with him. -"I'm wearing eyeliner, sweetness." I saw now that indeed the eyes had sunken, leaving the soft area around them to look several shades darker. -"Oh," was the only noise I could make. I stumbled closer, and knealt so that I could stare at the now altered eyes. In the space of two days, my lovers body had decomposed almost to the point of ripening; harvest. Even in death aging was still a problem. The men and women I fell in love with, love still, have never lasted for more than several weeks. -"Am I beautiful to you still, Cutter?" you ask, your slit mouth frowning in uncontrollable, and perpetual sadness. -"Oh," I repeated. "Oh my love, you are the most exquisite of all creations," I whispered as I leaned closer, and pressed my thumbs over his eyes so as to massage the naked cornea, and run my fingers through his still bleached hair. And sinking down, deep between his bruised lips and biting so lovingly, hoping to leave my familiar bite marks stamped gently into the soft muscles surrounding his mouth.