|
DRINK PAINT
I wanna drink paint.
Gallons of to-die-for lead base. Put color in the old GI. Experience
room temperature good ice cream consistency. Taste a spike sledged through
the throat, pin ya to the wall.
I plan to drink till paint pupils orange pith white.
I wanna die from ochre, from vermilion, from scarlet, from umber; head
in a toilet from Jersey; zapped on LSD under sputtery bug lights, while the
elevated thunders.
I wanna chug a pint of plum. Finish off the belly with five cans of
yellow.
Paint the town red as a stop to the blues. And no more shall the blues
reign. For this paint hath put me down. Thick bitter tinct made me extinct.
Put me down here - to jitter with you dead. To jig a cocoon no puzzle
ever saw. Put inspire to bed. Then inside that rattle - clutched in a pig
trotter - puke pigiron pigment.
Not what meant mentally to blow into my horn.
But what see now meant stuck fast.
I wanna drink paint.
IMAGE PROBLEM
Sidled up. Layed hands on the neck inside the mirror. I was sick of my
reflection. Never helped with the dishes. Never took me out to lunch. Never
showed me a good time. Always nagging I can't tell left from right. So after
years of looking me over, decided to disappear the pest.
In a former life I'd tried assault. Come away with splintery knuckles,
bloody forehead. Bastard hid behind shatters. Fit to whoa betide Nellie.
But tonight reached inside, choking the freak to death. It was great.
For the first time ever I grew unafraid who stood behind.
The tongue - a crut from the butt of a constipated mutt - exited. Eyes
bulged. Face blued. Hoisted spook up off floor. Jerked repeatedly. Till felt
neck crack.
Dropped the sack o' crap. Caught my breath a sec.
Thing lay face-up on the throw rug. Rolled eyes over.
Looked pretty dead. Not pretty; still a dead ringer for yours sic. But
it looked dead.
I stared into those baby blues. Caught myself on the pupil staring like
a mouse out its hole. Me tinier yet on the mouse eye, another me on the rug
in the eye of that mouse. I was infested with myself!
Lying flat on my back, eyes snaked at the glass, I couldn't stand it!
Images of me piled on down to the sphincter of bottomless infinity.
Realized, if the mouse jumped from my likeness into the dump - would be
trapped in a snap: dying proof God is in my image made.
Slithered shut the eyes. Chattered on the chain. Threw the deadbolt.
Scurried under the Murphy. Curled up recanting-scientist-wise. But it was
too late - revelation had already irreversibly goosed fancy.
Leaped up cursing, itching, scratching, flailing. Barely able to keep
lids on this blur passing for reality down.
Next: Dancing on the gut. Thumps intensified. Rhythm set up.
Thump-thump bred ump-ump, then mump-mump.
Holy God - my guts were coming up!
Slitted peepers. This death - why not peek? Only once in a life your
guts get truly stomped out. This no metaphor - no champagne, no Saran wrap,
no naked gal with strap-on telephone. No:
Hello - that you up my colon? Say something. Talk to me. The tongue is
a sex toy. So is the brain.
The room remained full of me. Flat as a curbside beer on the throw rug
I lay. Everything was normal. Seen from below. Except on the breadbox
boogeyed my upright corpse. So I took her for. Trampling intestines in her
bone bad glory. She was pretty far gone.
Eyes loved ivory kneecap, moved over wormy pelvis, up the ribs beyond
the clarinet neck to the skull:
Underchin jutted into the air; ceiling two feet below - stucco she
pitched for craniumfirst; while her tarsals tattooed my torso. Then - to
give the once-over - down bent the skull:
Me all right - I'd know those cheekbones even skinned and
lichen-blushed. Lantern jaw moon bare. Couple canines. Eight other teeth.
Grin suitable for framing blackmail. Cave in the cliff nose. And the
loveliest eyes you ever saw of spinning, spinning, never-stopping dice.
It was all up to chance. But so long as I kept up the jig - the
dizziness, the sickness, the Loch Ness - and all her sister brood - nested
with me in my image at the bottom peering through the top.
Dead or alive I was I; or I was not. Because, so the beat kept up, I
was it.
Jumped up. Chased through the dump - from kitchenette through bath
through living space - a slew of figments. Till I collapsed back - utterly
beat, without any the least dream - into my exhausted self.
KNOWING GOOD SHIT
The first time I tasted shit, I'll never forget. I was curious, young,
dumb. Took it off the rim. Just a fingerful.
It tasted like a lot of bad nights, compacted. Tasted like a kick to
the shins. Stank of claustrophobia. I stood. Wiped the residue off the
finger onto my pyjamas. Salivating. Swallowed hard.
Did I possess power?
I surveyed the room. Concentrated my vision on the medicine chest.
Thinking to blow it up.
I had tasted shit. I was strong. I knew it all.
The medicine chest refused to explode.
I zombied the bathtub. Hallucinating the girl nextdoor nude. Boobs
a-bobble in come-hither suds. But. nothing.
Shot my eyes at the ceiling. Hoping, at least, to extinguish the light.
The 80 watt bulb inside the pink fixture burned into my retina.
Shit. It was all the same. Life no less ordinary than before. My
gourmet indiscretion had netted zilch.
I started to exit. Remembered to flush.
Flushed. eyeing the poop disappear. And caught in the swirl, the
pattern of what led me here. From the spiral of whose fear I was now free. I
stepped outside into the labyrinth with now at last a thread.
[Home]
|
|
