The evening sun bathed in liquid stars drips down the brim of his plateau The smell of rioting flesh, putrefied eyeball sockets and festering intestines oozing maggot-laced blood encircled the bar Death sat and played a pulse-less tune on his guitar He sank his feet into the earth daydreaming of rolling hipsters and blazing flings He paints his notes with absent strings Idle visitors pay in beating veins while listening to their loneliness shudder on blinding streets The bartender burned alive, serves bourdon while his skin peels from his left cheek, Carving holes in their stomach, the stinging sweeten by angel-dust bottled in purgatory . Death played until his bones disintegrated into dust and left the innocent tortured by muted imagination, slaughtered kindness, butchered peace and raped justice. You roll the dice and pray for the sunrise never to arrive Has your song is played and death alluring smoked is inhaled unafraid. by Amelia Arce