Week 11: what, you thought I was gone? Nah, just waiting on a train. I've got some poems coming your way, ragged and rough but wanting to be read!
Should we aim for truth in verse? Sidewinder, give me
emotional verisimilitude instead of factual detail
Give me the cold slide of belly scales on my wrist
Give me the rough warmth of a heat lamp against my arm
Give me touch in new ways every morning
Vacuous mind, stop rehashing the same gluttonous thought.
Shake the turpitude from your eyelashes,
brush it from your cheeks, but
don't let it fall into your open mouth,
don't let it touch your tongue
Eating poison and folding it over to spit it back out
makes it venom
Damp dirt on the bellies of dart frogs, whether
golden, green, blue, black, will not blister you
but ravage your tongue, your tongue, your esophagus
will fold over, will push down poison, peristalsis
And wickedness rides waves, pulling twisted motion
to feel the rise and fall over and over, to witness
the destabilization, to -
Can I craft truth like a terrarium, a clear box where
we believe the falsehood of nature, suspend disbelief,
and watch a diorama of life?
Real honesty is cold blooded.