fly away
off this ledge
leave the city's burning smokestacks
and its contaminated roadways
behind you

(the yellow moonlight
reeks of sulfur
metallic paramours
offer short-term pleasures
riding on unctions
of blood and gasoline)

unfold your wings
let the sutures break open
and the wounds show
leave the parchments
and the epistles of sorrow

unencumbered
fly away into the furrowed
mercury impregnated skies
leave behind the apparatus
and the waters distilled --
this nefarious phantomville

fly away like
a paper umbrella carried by the wind
frayed only by your hesitancy
a last gasp of conformity

leave behind
the bleak prophecies
and the corrosive wisdoms
of the city's gilded protagonists
(heroes battle death
but death always wins)

for this reason, butterfly
let your blood go
let it escape along with
the memories, the fantasies
the spirits and the sedatives

fly away
from this dark city
go somewhere unfamiliar
where the sunrise doesn't feel like
an afterglow of a neutron bomb