waste.

Watch the glass shards

within blood coursing rivers

through arteries

shattering and imploding.

The innocence sold

for a glimpse of the afterlife.

Plastic voodoo people are shot down

by St. Peter’s goon squad,

shoot first

and ask for forgiveness afterwards.

The streets are over-run by rejects

that were kicked out of paradise.

    

Paper thin people

crying from the steps of the Pearly Gates;

their eye’s leaking sacred fluids

that can be injected

by eyeless junkies to get a quick fix.

There is an onion skin girl-puppet

caressing the cuts on her legs;

inserting vials of poison in the wounds.

They’ll bring a good price

from the surgeon.

The money will buy her a ticket

out of town before anyone realizes

how much poison is missing.

The air swells from the screams

as the shootings cut down the junkies supply.

Paper thin corpses blowing in the wind,

collecting at the feet

of prosthetic angels.

dead letters for living people

josephmcabral.com

centerfold.

We had settled on riding the city limits.

Passing the old playground

where we first

saw a picture of a naked lady.

We were content

with the silent treatment

until we got home.

This whole experience should have been better.

“Remember that song?

Remember this?

Remember that?

Remember when we all

went to the end of the year dance

and we all got drunk and

Amy and Mark got lost in the woods

behind the gymnasium?”

Memory lane carries a toll, and some of us have over paid.

I remember that picture of a naked girl,

how Mark swiped it

from his brother’s collection

of flesh colored treasures

that was kept in secret places in his brother’s room.

We once got yelled at for sneaking about 

looking for his also secret collection of baseball cards.

Hiding away the past is a learned behavior.

I remember being unsure how to react

and the look on most of our faces

told me, I wasn’t alone.

We hooted and hollered,

mimicking the reactions

we’d seen on television.

Her pose

persuading flaccid penises

and the hidden ejaculations

accomplished only

fragile embarrassment

and the act of

rivaled excitement

that told nothing

of her talents.

Children caught in the act of pre-designed lust.

dead letters for living people

josephmcabral.com

voyeur skin exhibit.

The boy drew what he saw.

     

Frail and pale,

poorly washed skin,

all the imperfections

glaring under spot light eyes.

The thin smoke

from my cigarette dictates

tendrils that outline her

in a grey and blue frame.     

The boy wants to be an artist.

His vision of beauty

and his grace of profane things

will be envisioned by his skill.

The female came to us out of expectation.

She moves and sways to

a song in her head.

A virgin, or so the legend goes,

              

Her false sense of bemusement

is only a token

that gets trades and deals

out of heroes waiting for victory.

The boy keeps on drawing

and she pretends to be smiling.

I didn’t want this to happen

but no one said a word.

dead letters for living people

beginning

She laid there. 
A warrior with a thick candy coated shell.
She was more than just depraved and starved; 
he was nothing to himself; yet, 
unwilling choices brought them together.
She smiled in a passive pleasure at the blood trickling off her flesh. 
She was no one when they met, yet he wanted to be her, 
touch her, 
her perfume swelled in the air. 

He looked at her, he saw himself; she knew who he was.
She allowed him to use her and yet refused him this desire. 
The sweat spilling over his body, dripping down his back, 
her flesh taunting in a perfect way that demeaned him of his own vanishing manhood;
crawling onto her, 
inhaling her, 
how he wanted to consume her and all that she meant to him.

There was the smile, 
emanating like a beacon from he knew not where. 
He grabbed at her throat; the girl could see heaven in his eyes. 
Whatever was left of her innocence was bubbling to the surface. 
After all these years, she now knew where she was going. Her release was with this
prosthetic-angel that had lost its way from heaven but could guide her home.
The man moved deeper, 
holding her tighter, he could smell her aura upon him, 
her unwashed hair, and the bruises. 
Broken pieces of her were sticking to him 
like so much garbage that it began to disgust him. 
If the eyes are the windows to the soul, he could see himself in her reflection.

So much of him was in her, and vise versa, that it made him scream out, 
she never made a sound and simply invited him in.
The control broken, 
the illusion reversed, he fell on her, exhausted, 
defeated, beaten, he let go his hold on her.
The man began to shed his own tears, the saline washing lines on her body.
His stomach wrenched, his heart, sore and darkened.
This man-child lay upon his eternal mother of us all. He lifted himself off of her,
a trail of snot, spit and tears following him from the pooled reservoir on her flesh.
Her eyes went blank,
he could see it, and they turned cold at the realization of his own inadequacies;
her face undid his own frailties.
The man knew, but was not capable of achieving
that which she had inaugurated him to do.
Her truths closed in and shadowed the light that was in her.

He moved onto the floor, lying atop the coldness of the room;
hearing the voices around him and below him,
all life contained within this building and taken away on the outside.
He lay naked upon the grime and dirt of worn souls and past lives;
he could hear her breathing and feel her heart beat in his skull.
He saw her move in the darkness of the room, the only light filtered in from the street.
The man realized her salvation was close,
the door within reach and he failed to show her the way.
He saw it shine in the dirty light.
Unbeknownst to him she had a piece of someone else’s love,
meant to protect her, and with that love, she opened her own door
and entered with a smile.
Her thoughts splattered on the wall
read by everyone who could decipher the language.
In with a bang and the building fell silent.

josephmcabral

dead letters for living people