costume jewelry

tell me it's okay
to miss my sickness sometimes. 
how a mania can form a burrow
where everything glints in the light.
we go to the flea market where each stand
is a little graveyard. whose pearls around
skipping around my neck? whose heads
rolled out of their felt hats? the dead birds
circling overhead waiting to take back
their feathers. i sometimes like to believe
in false gods. i prefer costume jewelry
over the real stuff. i like a diamond
without a tongue. a ruby that would
snap under foot. maybe it is because
they are so much more like me.
i have a set of teeth i use just to say,
"i am doing well how about you?"
sometimes my crazy is my favorite
little worm field. look at the chandeliers.
look at the centipedes. i'm not afraid
of worshipping vacancies. i catch
our reflection in the sapphire. my warped
water balloon face. running into a furnace
of glass eyes. let's not pretend 
there wasn't a wound in the ground
where the bones came out. i am promising
that once you get over the fact
that the necklace is not going
to talk back to you, you can say anything.
i pray for trees to grow pearls. i pray
for platinum nights & to loose my feet
to the escape. sliding along a collar bone 
of a dead girl. me, the dead girl
dressed to the nines in costume jewels.
this is what i mean when i talk about
my other life. there she was & also
there she never ever was. 
now, let me go off & be delusional.
i do not want to know these are made
of glass. tell me we are the gold children.
tell me the bugs on the walls 
are not bugs at all, but gems.