kill joy

my world rests on a stack of hands piled up like turtles all the way down. i never said goodbye to my dealer when i moved & i probably won’t say goodbye to you when i turn to dust behind your back. the hand strangles until i slip like silk through shifts & drip like day-old rain down the sewer grate. i am hungry in ways the mortals don’t comprehend, except eve. i’d have sunk my teeth through ripened flesh pulled tautly around sweet innards the same way you devour me. peel my rind, no bite left behind. consumable mind, still stuck on the vine. entrails slicked back like greaser hair & leather teeth to rip up cow hooves & whispered slaughterhouse musings. wrapped up in the sunlight of golden hour fading to a twilight still undead, but far from romantic. more hectic & the haptics buzz me back to a reality stitched together with ink wells & pay-per-view tv. & the past is still lava, still bear traps & cyanide-dipped kisses — so sweet. so poison. my head’s getting heavy pressed against your arm, but adoration is anthrax masquerading as powdered sugar. there’s cocaine in the well water & everything tastes like chlorine baked in sunshine that i still cannot find. you think i am someone i am not. so blatantly who i am, but still misunderstood. so i turn my colors to the moon, where understanding is inherent & i don’t have to go to war just to be seen. clean the car windows & stop fixating on a crystal ball that whispers lies in the voice of a god still burning in time with pompeii. you like it full-frontal, but reject the x-rating. just a little won’t do, but all or nothing is too heavy to carry. so spit it out before you choke on your own misplaced footsteps. grind it into the soil with your cleat & watch as your avoidance sprouts into a cactus gulping water from the bleeding night sky. did you let yourself unfold like origami cranes in the hand of a giant too eloquent to fee-fi-fo-fumble the bird so tragically, she learns to fly south again despite climate change? your tongue tip cannot fathom the taste of questions pressed against the glass returning from whence it came to somersault in sundresses while escalating the rapture. cannot follow a single thought i don’t dilute with cream soda like wine at the dinner table given to premature kinderen shouting from beneath quilts strung across the backs of sofas too stiff to ever find sleep upon. you cannot hold my hand without disappearing between the finger webbing torn to pieces to make room for the mist descending from rooftops too covered in moss to be used as a proper vantage point. teacups can only hold so much, but pitchers widen their mouths to drink me down. up. i lap at the pool, dog tongue slack & parched, emptiness & optimism, damn the metaphor back to elementary. it’s not outlook or perspective but desire & capacity & the limits that tip the scale from open to stuffed, rock the boat & row yourself back to shore where depths cannot swallow you like whales slurping their krill & jonah & there’s no god that can floss you out of the teeth you squeezed yourself between. slack jawed & crooning like trumpets will cry out for you from the corner of the street & even when there’s music, you still ripple like pebble in lake. flaccid still, no hardship to restructure the goo left seeping through the sheets you swore you washed. & i don’t believe in witchcraft but don’t dance in blood that isn’t yours. the link is weak & the chain reaction was halted by the police for a traffic stop but there’s liquor on your breath & flattened to pavement like a dream sequence pulled from the harbor still ringing with church bells split into pennies that you cannot use as legal tender round these parts. i’ll break your twenty so you can feed the meter & bite the curb with the fury of forgotten lockjaw. i told you to switch to tea but you never listen, never hear, never remember how to pack your own suitcase. don’t leave the salt shaker in the sink. you are not prepared for tuesday afternoon or a blow dart to the neck, but there’s a target tattooed on your jugular just waiting to be kissed.