fish piety
piety ducks its pale head by the bedposts and the rats keep the city running - ten million operation while sneakers scuff the overpass construction and hang low till the lord starts cracking jokes in service, then you know its time to go and how to shut the door tight when you leave. listening to the lock click and feel the bumps on my tongue you felt that like an ocean swallowed by a whale did you ever dream how to get out? i try to get out every night oilcloth lamp post my head on a spike fish gutted for food, if you cut the intestines youll smell it, i swear. eye-glint of knives kept in thigh-pockets thousand tiny stars burnt all the oxygen in my room glowing pink, blue, golden burn cornea glare chucked the cans far as she could brickwork foundation cracks and you ever saw a sweet potato mold? i did, stuck a bit to our table when i tugged it popped vesicle needle -- Sylvester plays us down the board Nails clacking on the keys And halts on c major tap-flat toe pointed skyward, i stand And skip And trip down the sideboard Crystal glass of whiskey The adams apple bulged and retracts And shooted down your gut Skylarks chant merry screech, So the car in the quiet Sped 90 on the interstate I set my head on your shoulder in the backseat Dream of sheep If I manage to sleep. Cling like youll die And then die When it starts to move Weight at the bottom, Rope burn in my hands Raw red skin flame Like your tongue rolls my name. I knit you home. Fish scale glimmer in the sun Bright burn And no fun When you hold the rod And reel back Heart attack Now feed it slack, She looked into the fish eye And saw a pewter shine Had to wince, her fingers clenched Toss the filth back in spotted green waves. But he held her tight Its normal, alright? Dead-limp stares dont mean nothing. Im sure the fish brains as special as yours. And germanys elections looking like a bust Im gonna bust a nut and go to sleep. -- I cut eyes Like split zip ties And surf the web -- pixel taste Burnt tip of tongue, but in the long run I felt my brain throb beyond the walls Of cranium and dribble out my ears. Make sure to catch the grease in glass jar And on the windowsill it hardens Till youre ready to heat up the pan Scarf barf in the toilet bowl Purple flecks shine like gold in swimming pupil-vision Bits of organs spin lazy circles Drop fishing-pole fingers with derision On an antediluvian stomach mass And run your thumb-prints down my thighs Mark it in wet concrete Make it harden before too long And then mix it with bible pages That cheap tissue paper, Shove the mass down my throat And bid me to bed. I place my trust in sticks i step on down brick sidewalks Laid patterns shift a bit off Harder you look, the slower you go -- Ole Worm strutted onto the scene, Hooves clacking on the cobble Cobblestone teeth dug into my city-jaw concrete Reaches farther down than youd think, Driven down with hammer-force Scrape chips between the lips and gums And then press your cheek to the ground To feel it burn Salty sea-grief tears the skin As saliva burns my chin I never did see the end of a rhyming couplet. Eyelash follicle on a mushroom platter, Lead-paint horses gallop down the sideboard. Toss lettuce in your mouth and concern your self with trivial matter newspaper splatter And election poll shatter. Tucked into my embroidery yarn, I hid a box of prayer under the barn Dug a hole a couple inches deep To small scarlet fingers, far as she could reach. Well, now I pick stones off the ground and Skip them into the wild river Untamed waves still bid their courses Stay steady over muddy rocks The steed reared its head and snorted Plume of sickly wet water out the nostrils Teeth that could kill a carrot Told me to stay. Then i watched its tail swish Flies gathering around their home And it disappeared between two trees Like a hand shoved inside a bone. Goodbye, Ole Worm, Wear your unicorn horn. -- EMBODIMENT. PLEASURE. DESEXUALIZED. The confluence of structuralists, semiotics, post-structuralists, On the banks of cereal-milk rivers Fruit loops floating past onerous dab rigs Crackling burn of mile-long dread. We fucked like street dogs tireless jump watched by bloodshot eyes and nerves shot to exhaustion, but the pattern repeats every swim, and we move our marionette bodies close to each other for a few hours, muscles tense all the time; tightened string like a bullet as jabs grace your tongue heavenly angel intellect I tasted on your skin, and host of seraphim in the grease of your hair Cellular bilayer built itself on polarity Proving binary to cuticle-bit petri Then it started to sort And shake itself out Silly homogeneity, youre nothing to me. Heart beat hover on the second measure I hear your breath hit slower On the side of my cheek Like ice-cube crumbs bread well done. Trust no one -- no one is one, reduce people to threes and no smaller. I am a terrible variable. The bugle liked to chip its teeth on stale potatoes In order to bash out a tune In time with the sun and the moon, she screeched The fisherman throws his harpoon Its all sore stomachs and ulcers up your arms; Traded dignity and eyeshot stares for a little soiree on the couch And liquid lakes in the carpet, from a stream you forgot could flow. Like so, bathe in brackish sulphur only and clasp your palms to God If you can reach that high... Unclean fabric trickles off the body, Hard breasts of granite seawall hold up My mouth erodes like silt when you dig into it, And if i forget to take my hands off your chest now, theyll stick there forever. But I stopped looking at my feet, and now Im lost, and my soles cant hit the pavement further. So place me in the dandelion weed Chew me like a cow In the tunnel again, and it felt like stone Move your mouth quick Throw a dog a bone Scrap hobbyhorse rides Over hills of green Washed over with the tide We stay clean Antihistamine carpet in convertible socket-clean I fall over so I can get caught, Flu-plague dances up your throat with synonym-puke. Map the world on my crusted skin Dried out a million So dipped it in the lemon-lime slurpee cup Crisp lid didnt stick Neon on the pavement Icicle throat. Watercress world in stems between the soil and air sprouting thick and wet Hung hopes on anemic Old Believers In the chalky Union Dawn flowed so wild it soaked into the very rock of this place The rock I clung to, pebble form, on my knees in soggy silt-dirt piecing noble gasses together again Till we periodically shut our eyelids And with that the hope Sailed out the window, tacking upstream. Meanwhile my skull plunged into foamy surf shoals Grainy sand where the enamel rose from my gums Spit none For fun Fry egg till it gets boring I hope when I die someone makes my intestines into sausage skins.
richmond 2025