The Age of Vicissitude
Empty bird’s nests in front of an old-fashioned
gumball machine. Smooth fiberglass covering
one small part of a dirty garage. My aging face over
powers my brain canal. I mean the drain pan
from which the latest assortment of new and improved
insects crawl out the holes, aiming towards my receding eyes.
You get what you deserve, they cry, even though
they can’t talk except inside my recurrent nightmares.
You don’t deserve pretty dreams anymore.
My brain is broken. Slashed like an old horror
film scene, retching and dragging my un-tight legs along
this antiquated, soon to be autopsied linoleum floor.
Cracked allure of concussive gore. Bruised and confused
and wavering away from reality. Disabled runway model.
Old cat lady with swollen feet and scratches across
flimsy wrists. Another pair of cat eye glasses
falls off my head and breaks and the room grows darker.
I might let the black cat sleep
on my bed but he keeps hissing as if on the brink
of attacking his best friend, which I pretend is me,
but I’m nobody’s best friend and never will be again.
The black cat will soon morph into another venomous rat,
secreting an evil fetus that is born to die. I won’t name him.
I’m not a fan of naming someone after someone else.
I want everyone to be themselves, not part of another
herd. I’m not a ceiling fan except in that
repeated nightmare in which the fan lobs off heads
like a guillotine hanging from my bedroom ceiling.
I am connected to a small multitude of paper cutters
lurking in every room of this hostile hostel until
all the paper and visitors and viewers bloody disappear.
I do not anticipate becoming mayor, I only
anticipate spiders on a wall all of the time.
My brain is brimming with ampersanded eruptions
of malformed spider eggs or convoluted teeth
trying to hide themselves inside
every blood-drenched pillow case.
My tooth fairy is running in circles, falling,
stagnating, rotting away into nowhere land.
The men here are staring at porn stars
dressed like scantily clad tooth fairies,
offering special treats for all their teeth,
open wide and see the holes.
The men here are drawn to porn stars more
than 20+ years younger than me
or the men. My body parts are vestiges
being disposed of. Stuffed in a shut box
instead of poured in a shot glass.
No longer anyone’s fantasy,
not even my own.
Apply this cream twice daily
to make us disappear!
This cream is inside a bottle of wine.
I drink it up, throw the bottle in my trash can.
Nobody will notice all the wrinkles I’ve accrued
because they’re not looking at me anymore.
My bottle of wine stopped sparkling.
Even some of the men who say otherwise
have no problem jerking off
while watching women 20+ years younger than me
and younger than their kids.
No problem spending their free time
scanning through online boobs
above flat stomachs and shaved
wet pussies. Sticking their dicks in
young lovers in their poems,
naked bodies on their screens,
lines and curves of women crawling
around their floor, shaking and spreading
and opening mouths younger than their daughters.
I break open another bottle then break that bottle in half.
Slash off my sagging breasts with shards of glass,
throw them down the dispenser, watch the blood
spew and chug itself down the drain.
Nobody else will notice because
I’m not new, fresh, and purring.
I’m not a special sacrifice. I’m not a body
of christ. The saints died younger than me
and had tighter pussies.
My brain is surrounded by an exoskeleton,
but the inside is disintegrating, shriveling,
drying out, dissolving, breaking another sun
glass into shards of unwearable,
unbearable, unseeable, almost non-existent.
If not by my own hand, FAMILY SUNDAY would have murdered me
eventually. Tossed me in the body of christ
and made you swallow me
and then perpetually gag.
Then tied me up in the hog garden
covered with manure to improve
my ongoing dry spell.
From grim nemesis into dull into almost invisible,
I sink further down in the mud
and drown underneath gutted ground
where nobody can see me anywhere.
Then nobody can hear me.
When I open my mouth,
dying limbs fall out
from the space where more
Eucharistic cosmetic surgery
should have been inserted.
I try to un-repress myself,
but my jawbone collapses in on itself.
My blood dries out on the page,
gets crossed off and ripped away.
Poems are dead trees sawed.
Body parts broken and dispersed.
Burnt out. Another nightmare fuel fire
followed by Morphia ashes swallowed by maggots.
Hacked, rotten branches dropped into riverbeds
like outdated, eroding paper products.
Not enough bandages to cover up
all these damaged goods.
I might ration one eye
into the old fashioned gumball machine
if I could still figure out how to open it,
but my eyes have turned the color of blackened jelly and mold.
***
(Sources: Aside from the Italicized lines in the first stanza, the other Italicized lines in this poem were taken from the book, “Casey Anthony, Renowned Trapeze Artist” by Joseph Goosey, published by Schism Neuronics, 2024)
Horror Sleaze Trash 