Yogurt

This delicious jell is refrigerated and sealed in a plastic cylinder. The foil peels off; the culture spits and burps. You dip your spoon in and pull it out.

On it is a blubbering mass with chunks of fruit encased within. Strawberries stare at you like red eyes as it enters your mouth. It looks like a great chasm when you open it to admit entry. Stalactites and stalagmites hang at the tips of the cave.

The yogurt slops inside. But you don't chew. You just slurp it around for a few seconds, enjoying its chilled refreshment. Then you swallow. And it just slithers down your throat, uncaring.

For it is the most indifferent of all the foods, since its milk body was warped by bacteria. Afflicted with sickness, disfigured beyond recognition, the former milk now wishes for death. You should be only too happy to oblige.

Peeling the Orange

I held the orange in the palm of my hand. It was of a deep, lusty hue. My mouth watered in anticipation of its luscious center. It had something I desperately needed--rejuvenation.

My fingers dug into its crust, prying away the peel like some strange predator unhousing its prey. The orange made sickly squishing sounds as I rent the skin, my nails delving into its marrow. A crisply sweet citrus smell wafted up my nose. I lay the pieces off to one side. The work was slow, but steady. I came to the north and south poles of the sphere and went to work on them.

The stem was unearthed--a limp, stringy tentacle that threatened to encircle my finger and choke it. Fortunately, it remained lifeless, dangling and swaying insipidly.

Eventually the outer layer lay in a jumbled heap on the counter top, looking like a shattered orange-white jigsaw: a grizzly puzzle even for the most gifted surgeon. The skinless body stood, undead. White arteries trailed all over its hulk: veiny, crawling things that pulsed sickeningly.

Still hungry, I brought myself to separate the sections, telling myself that this is the way of things. Slowly, I dug my thumbs into the quavering flesh and ripped the body in twain. It sprayed its viscera helter skelter, droplets rained on my hands and fingers, and the tissue resisted with an awful friction. There is no sound so abnormal, so nauseating, so excruciatingly unbearable as the sound flesh makes when violently rent asunder.

I stood there, quickened in breath and failing in health, staring at the result of my labors. My hands were sticky, stinking, dripping. And the corpse lay there accusingly: tortured, violated, molested beyond recognition.

Slowly I backed away: overcome with revulsion, dazed with misgiving. And, waiting for the sirens to come take me away, I thought about what I had done.

A Brush with Fatigue

I heard an automated audience choke, livid with laughter, as I pushed the stage button in memory lane. And the obscene sea roared in response.

Their insipid waves are necessary to ease my pain while the reaper, Fatigue, licks me dry. How he crowds me; how I wish to slaughter his haunting form.

My fists beat boomingly on his crab shell, which returns unsatisfactory raps to my enraged ears.

How he clings, claws clasping my heart and throat. Shrieking oranges fade to purple and then to red, and the pressure steams upward from my abdomen.

Beady, black, crustacean eyes stare back into mine, black with the sleep I crave, but cannot earn. Its antennae drift, lazily across my skin, slowly as if submerged, drawing shudders from my breast and goosebumps to my suffocating skin.

As I implore my higher powers to brush him off, pleading face teared, the audience just roars dumbly back.

Untitled

I'm tired of the razors that cut my face, causing little beads of blood to pearl and gurgle. Pinpricks of guilt that burn but don't clot. I want safer razors to sweep across my cheeks, clearing them of yesterday's shadows.

But the blame lays in my unsteady hands.

How Tired.

How tired I am,
Of insecure women,
Though society makes them wrong,
Who don't desire our dirty work.

But we throw our dishes,
At their Mexican heads,
And abuse them greenly.

Oh what a graveyard,
Lonely and somnolent,
What a song it rings,
So sleepy.

they never wanted the alarm to ring,
We hated in the darkness,
but darkness grew,
With us.

they held us,
But we bit,
and bloody teeth,
Proved,
they hate theirs.

How easy it is for you to sway within the hammock of health.

You shift and swing with balance and rhythm,
As your god pushes you with imaginary hands,
And you rejoice with zeal,
Afraid while you feel.

But me, I fall because I've lost my balance,
I can't sway like a sealed cocoon, like you,
back and forth.

I fall because I've accidentally rent that cocoon with my freakish toenail. It is overly sharp;

I never trimmed it.
My leg kicked as I slept. It rent the barrier, slim but earnest, the somnolent heart, and the blood, flew into my face.

How I drank it;
Oh...how I drank it.

Can I Snatch a Second

Can I snatch a second of eternity,
To analyze uncertainty,
To grow in comprehension,
And lessen testy tensions?

Eternity is always jealous,
Of the moments humans relish,
Of the instants they hold dear,
Though entrapment loiters near.

I wish to bask within the bubble,
Let the world reduce to rubble,
Drifting without weight,
Upon the palm of fate.

But when I over-linger,
It will clench its hateful fingers,
My tranquility will be burst,
And I will know great thirst.

Letter to a Loved One

Be careful that you don't confuse courage and masochism. The two can sometimes appear as one. The utter disdain of bodily pain, that savage lack of fear in the face of harm, is often attributed to bravery.

But let my laden clouds douse, for a moment, your perspective with mine. Holster your umbrella and bare to me your naked nape. Feel my didactic kiss coldly pepper your skin and summon goosebumps.

Humans are infinitely complex creatures beneath our simple routines. Sometimes we are pushed, but other times we thrust ourselves into the scalding fire. The natural, human reaction is to withdraw, but at times we do not. We like the pain; the stinging tears it brings.

We mutely watch as our flesh boils, like fascinated students of anatomy. We watch the scars form on our bodies from a neighboring perspective, though it is ourselves we mutilate. Pride, abhorrence, self-pity weld together into a high-browed romanticism that is sweetly poisonous to reason. It is a deadly nectar.

Oh, the liberation this nectar brings! What release there is in tragic downfall! How easy it is to shirk responsibility and cloak the soul in ennobled scorn! There lives a fear that causes one to wholeheartedly leap, frantic with adrenaline, into the very maw of despair. Its appetite is insatiable; it rarely frees its prey. Its nectar is its appeal, and death is never enough.

Sensation

Sensation,
Is a wintry whore,
That covers her breasts,
But exposes her core.

I'd stumbled into,
Her lusty den,
She was waiting to cloud,
My mind again.

I wasn't drunk,
Or in between,
Just utterly misled,
By a pensive spleen.

My thoughts were a puzzle,
Broken and scattered,
And morality's picture,
Was confusedly shattered.

My eyes met hers,
And unable to remove,
I stood rooted in place,
When she started to move.

She rose with dignity,
And I stood there mute,
My body responding,
My mind in dispute.

She laid me to rest,
With premeditation,
But my head spinned round,
With mortification.

I swooned in a daze,
Fluid with fright,
Sad recollections,
Did painfully alight.

But Sensation just smiled,
As she pursed her lips,
And her rosebud descended,
And my hands grasped her hips.