My skull,
your skull,
incarcerated expectation.
Calcified cartilage.
Cerebral confines.
Carve in them valleys of vapidity.
Tell the mush where it is allowed to slop and slide.
It must be structured; It needs structure.
The rigidity of ideation; It reeks idyllic,
spilling from caul-de-sac’d confines.
Cast in its cells of corporeal congruence.
My eyes,
your eyes,
amalgamation of perception.
For you to see me, you must wade in the pungent mildew of paradox.
You must make opaque the incongruence.
Clip off the bits that don’t make sense.
For you to know me, you must reach the limits of
jagged fingernails,
Feel me through the salt-lipped streak of
your winter-crusted lip
And
the
steady
stench of
perspirant
obedience.
Soured stagnant, for
your unhooked jaw.
My life, your life,
measured in the unsteady
tow of mundanity.
Read me left to right.
Thicken to roux.
Tell me how to live, and
you can show me how
to die.
Expectation is so comfortable.
I know how to play the part.
I lay supine on the sterile dirt.
Lifeless, melded to life.
You know how to see me. See me, see me now—alien bile packaged as
astronaut ice cream.
What oozes within me? What lies beneath the porcelain?
