Dismantle this flesh, this bulwark of soul
Titillate earthen vestures, harbours of pain
Swollen with the ecstasy of their burden
Strip what remains with instruments of rage

Employ your moon-tapped fingers slowly 
Against my Jovian planet of fertile pulse
Disincarnate my innocence to nacre 
Supplicate the void until I compose you 

Offerings of strangled lambs, cut throat lips
I am obsessed to fulfill sonorous bounties
Inching along hooked smiles through veins
To the catacombs of man, the heart of a woman

---

Mason Betty, “Conventions Of Flesh (Plenty)” from Sallos

A platter of your smiles
Ink closer to my window
The gutted fears all departed
Curves incense your rebellion 

My handmade woes perk finely
Fond echoes are their offer
I exchange my last banknote
For stonewall in my cavity 

Drowned moth service as substance
Your fingers rot on cheekbones
So warmly as I harden 
My laughter paints your posture

While raindrops fall like static
Last chapters reek of infection
Such corners turned to brushing
Pus bloodied from glass refined

My mouth wettens with the high 
Tempting ceilings with spittle
I pivot, shake cries salted 
You witness my dusk highly

I flip your pages of flaked tattoos
Bleak sockets swear your sight
Bones splintered by my cruelty 
A canvas flanked by teeth 

Your smiles are now rationed

---

Mason Betty, “Smiles” from Sallos

Though you quarreled 
Conquered men alone
Talons besiege your frowns
Nightly pupils shelter behind
The bloodlust you condone
Within the snarling beast
Nimble fangs that cut to size
Waits the hissing swan
Magnificently composed

Not love, lust do I carry
On my rashed shoulders
But merely a quart of water
To replace the poison 
That filled your heart with air
Your eyes betray you girl
Violence is merely your fear 
Turned serrated to slice a piece
Of promises others never kept

I beg her, no more 
She slides the blade
A smile escapes my pain
It’s all just a game
A beautiful game

---

Mason Betty, “Beneath You” from Sallos

I thought a misery should be my muse
Naked and honest and filled with pain
Bastions of despair fed bone inkwells

I profited words off of her oils
Ejaculated stories, masochistic highs
Opiate’s bliss extracted from poppy’s pain

Mumbled to this spirit I was her
She merely turned her head and sang:
“No, but you belong to me now.”

---

Mason Betty, “Paragraph 17.” from Sallos

I see the poor in your furs
Acrylic resin in your grins
You ponder the halls as though
They hold more than bare walls

Perhaps you seek a point of exit
Doors guard the external truth
You will not find the sun here 
Poor tulip, fed on malicious deeds

Did they paint your globes in blood?
You need not say, it is in your eyes
Cut gems that gleam of heart
What finds you here, is it within?

Be it so, brush me a lullaby, please
Disengage this rachet that brought me
Past green doors, elongated bulbs 
In a paper gown with heavy wrists

Blades sought your legs to ribbons
Did they replace the bones they broke?
Hide the transcripts as promised?
I fear not, mildew memories follow you

You are among the clouds now, dear
And I fear it only goes downwards 
Gasps like the startled mass below
Soon you will count the evergreens

one by one

It is over for the both of us, the future
Is nothing new, I saw it all prior
For I belong among the dark blues
That overlook the breath of your soul

---

Mason Betty, “Unity” from Sallos

Jilted lovers from the sky fall 
Painting the onlookers in rituals
Red and brilliant and earnest

Only abating when the skies clear
To the rare moons that play fate
Draining all closer to the craters

At the centre of the carnality
A pink mass corners into itself
Besieged in pockmarked detritus 

Burning still against the distrust
That first soul wanders close 
The visceral tone reveals itself

To seldom be composed past 
Inklings of half-finished words
Lost in the euphoria of renewal 

---

Mason Betty, “Valentine’s Day In Carancas” from Sallos

It will not be you who saves me in the end 
Under a skyline of screaming neon men

Wounds that carved their way before you
Still weep in your presence and so my dear

I hope I have made it abundantly clear
Though I love you, my bandage are through

---

Mason Betty, “Choices” from Sallos

The pitfall of that amorous desire, notations
Morphed blinking words that fail to all but outline
Delectable nectars fanatically wrung
From a homely flower above dirt most salient 
Midst the cacophony of crows that speculate
Through tenacious caws, sparking dread 
In the weak hearts of men, their palpable flesh 

Fair weather permits strolls along the path
Delineating the approach to futured smiles
Tattooed with inks of halcyon once presented
As a enteral freefall of winded ecstasy
Rushing, contorting bodily flows into sensation
Proved but the sword of passion dulls
Rusted as the collapse downwards continues 

Just beyond the rising stem lays the descent
Eons of hands, implements now machines
Braved beneath in servitude with obsession 
Parasites of lust lent ears for voices of the dark
Yet today, from the pathway as old as emotion
No diesel smoke perverts the specters of work
The slashing of rock remains but distant ghost

It is here, planted besides the petal’s stead
Below the spiteful warbling of harbinger birds
Decision presents itself in the hand of the pit
Unfolding papers promised under cogitation
Never to present in the company of stagnancy
Truths that spoke themselves before guided pages
Those lips knew before the recording

That launching oneself in the care of the hollow
Brings a feeling that may last as long as heart
Voracious for flesh and destinies self-extoled
But sours still as time erodes what was sought
The pink life matures to purple before rotting 
Does one truly desire to feel the love of the fall?
And can one endure the fall when love departs?

---

Mason Betty, “Oak Island” from Sallos