NEPTUNE

Beat me: my blood is yours
Slap me: my eyes belong to you
Swallow me whole & I will try
not to die so I can sing your praises
when you in your gracefulness let me out,
my mouth wet with you, my hands dripping you,
all of my cells alive with the stinging
kisses that are you--

They don't understand why I stay with a man
who cups crimson pain in the palm of his hand,
they don't know, they don't know what it is
to grab your gaze. An instant
is worth my life. Your power
could harness tides.

My inner universes hang separate from the outer airs

Nausea and I been grappling for a few months now.
Mid January she snuck thru my window and
laced her way in between my greased ears;
I woke up not quite retching, not quite gagging, but almost.
I haven't vomited once but she is snaked around the flask bean that is my stomach.

I learned to live with her quickly.
Don't get up too fast.
Don't twirl in your chair.
Eat anyway.
When you are bored in class think about how sick you feel, puff out your cheeks and sigh, imagine projectile vomiting across the classroom, imagine feeling bile rising in your throat running to the bathroom and barely making it in time, not caring who hears you.
I've always had a strong stomach. I can beat her any day.
But she is always lining my mind like furry black velvet.
When something is startling or terrible and my mouth is empty she fills the spots between my cheeks.

I swallow chins like that green eyed gray eyed Henry in that nightmare lynchian film.
I pick the skin off of my thumbs.
My legs are thinner than they've been in years.

It's strange remembering what life was like without her.

I can't remember if there was more color in the world.
Maybe it just seemed brighter because
it was winter then and meant to be gray; now it is May and might as well be March.
My spring, where did you go? Did Nausea steal you away?
Tell me it ain't so. Tell me you are not roiling in my stomach
right now. I know you are not
because if you were I would feel splinters
of sunlight and birdsong and the fragrances of flowers would
come out my nose.

(Yesterday I saw two plump red breasted robin, fearless.
Yesterday I saw several of those awful black rooster with spiked mohawks on their heads, bird I had never seen before this so called spring, are the starlings listening to the Sex Pistols or are these demon offspring something entirely new?
Yesterday there was a very small cat without a collar looking at me also without fear and then there was a very large cat with the same markings crouching guarding its land polishing a great rusty rifle in its paws.)

This is late spring as late spring would be in a sadder universe than this.

Them parasites would die in my conchae.

Play what is not there

Air isn't always a silent thing. Sometimes it calls attention to its existence. Sometimes I am holding my breath hard and the air is tangible, tangible because it is not there; I feel it pressing against my skin like a million invisible tapeworms or, practically the same thing, a million invisible universes.

Frogs can breathe through their skin; people can suffocate if they hide it all. What do I need lungs for? My mitochondria can power themselves. If my skin was better I could power my heart with oxygen I would suck through my pores.

If I tried harder I would be a transparent wafer and the light would shine through me.