A caked face crumbles

with aimless cruelty. Eyes

stare from charcoal sockets,

damply disguising how he

came to be. Then a voice

curls at the corners,

billows out like a speech 
balloon. Flames are

preferable to money, death

more desirable than status.

We hear the ever-changing

history of his scars,

how deformity 
defiles a character.

Beneath a lick of the lips,

yellow teeth bleed

from the inside. Gummy

stigmata of a psychopath.

To be an agent of chaos, 
one must sustain the

democracy of random

destruction. Empathy is for

another type of fool, and he

makes us all ridiculous,

satirises virtue in a facial twitch,

the perverse tricks. 
He laughs, but is he happy?

Waddling down hospital

steps, havoc biting his

heels. He just does things – the

actions void of volition – while

you remain a reluctant witness
to this macabre magic.

If you’re not careful, he’ll

cut a new smile for you,

carve it clean from your jowls

so you can beam hate,

so you can work the wound

of your mouth

bright as a gunshot.