Serial No. 5

Perpetual poisoning

Residual arsenic shortening

In the frying pan making

A funnel cake of your brain

Taste the sugar oxidizing

And staining your mouth with lies

In this world of chemical alterers

We falter and slip between words and curses

Muttered under the steps

That lead to the basement

And its collection of well preserved corpses

Dolled up and some

Balled up and crumpled

Discarded, half-finished manifestos

Written, soaked-in, and drowned

The face, precision and art

And bound in leather stitches

Bearing witness

To the crimes the killer painted on

Now sapphire lips

The favored hang beneath lights

The serial artist's plight

Which parts will he leave lying

On the cutting room floor

When he trades his chambers for the night

To collect one more

And he dances with his dolls

And he fucks them all

And he soils his dolls

And he toils to make them all

And he knows not to involve

The outside world in his cause

They wouldn't appreciate his dolls

They wouldn't understand them at all

Not at all, with their knots et al.

That lock their jaws.