I can almost taste how tense those muscles are when they swing the red-hot tire-iron into my face again and again
And oh, how the blood keeps coming and oh, how it pools on the uneven concrete
Steamy and globby and staring at my contorted jaw and the hard lines of arms using my skull like a drum
More thwacks and now human barbecue as teeth drop into the syrupy mix and float like islands and I think of A.1. steak sauce

One second of silence and I wipe my hands on my thighs
The only difference between jeans and a dress is about six inches and I start to wonder
Which six until my head jerks left and then right again and
God, don't those ******* arms ever get tired

I lick my licks and lap up the red that must be running down my chin
Tastes like maraschino cherries and some other flavor I can't quite grasp
I search the tip of my tongue for it but find only the holey ridges in my gums and suddenly I realize
Maybe that flavor is the six inches that separate jeans from dresses

But then I laugh, and somewhere far above me someone else does too.

Like...it feels like whole world and the, you know, uh...all the smily candy teeth and ******-out-of-their-mind ******* with their lip service to some techno-God of...what? Acceptance and power dynamics, or empowerment  or whatever... It's like they're out there building these monoliths to themselves...like, mirrors made out of diamonds that's all positivity and critical theories and ****, even Heidegger or Nietzsche thrown in there, Foucault, Lorde sometimes, a lot of other names, too...so much to remember when you wade into the world of identity, right? But it's also so sugary that I get a headache, like, when I see the steel roots that they're...repurposing? I keep tripping over them and stuff, I dunno.

Queer's a word I hear mostly coming out of only my own mouth, maybe the walls...if wall's could talk, right?...and that really tells me a lot, I guess? About what it means to be a ***, but like, not really? And how I'm totally not trans? I mean I'm still BASICALLY a boy, right? Like shouldn't I be like, calling myself a girl if I'm not a boy, etc.? The stony monuments to Liberation...they're using the big L right?...tell me so. I'm so close but still not good enough, or something like that. The binaries are there for a reason, etc. Not even that. Just a quiet, like...exclusion? Joke? What I wouldn't give to be a fully-fledged ****** or a true ******, y'know?...card-carrying member of the conference, where I can actually cry and my voice comes out in something other than a croak and people look at my tears and hear my words and say, Yes, that's real and that's okay?

Whatever though. I'm probably wrong anyway, right? I'm just half-baked, or not exactly full, or...what's the word?

None of clothes are right and so I am not human. Only cold winds and crazed neon. I sometimes shine a flashlight under my fingers to remind myself of my bones. But they're as breathlike and photonic as the plastic tears I will never be given the right to have.

We know that **** ain't real.

How brittle a (we) can be. What sound is my voice allowed to have other than the violent dance of glass on concrete? My happiness always hangs from the end of a baseball bat.

And that's the way things are.

Of course, my mantras are just idolatry or faggotry. Systems of oppressive heat and chemical equations either pat me on the back or slap me across the face and I can never quite seem to catch my breath or feel an embrace, not really.

My forehead burned, but I closed my eyes.

How heavy must my skin and eyelashes and all the things that encase me, engender me, hang about me before I can finally count myself beloved? The question is as impossible as my own humanity, and my existence is not so self-evident that kiwis taste like queer fruits. So until smiles lose their tartness and I can breathe at last, *******.

if only radiowaves tasted like honey
or each incandescent laugh was lined with sugar

and I could close my eyes and dream away my burning forehead
being cooked by alien eyes

and these hilltops would finally yield milky wheat
in breathless smiles and airy sighs

hard teeth and candy apples might seem a bit less hateful

pleasure flowin'
with blue skies full of cigarette smoke.

puff. feeding the king,
make sure she's full
'cuz she's going higher.
not enough for me.

time out, clock spinnin'
like a skyrise,
cracking from its own demise.

queenie chuckles precociously
and the diamonds embedded on her tongue [staccato]
turn to tar.

i would **** for silence.
i smother her with a pillow.
she touched me there,
on the cheek. [accelerate]
i saw her wrinkles turn to corn stalks
and i looked away.

i was always wantin' that pleasure.
my release was at the bottom of stale marlboro lights.
where is QUEENie?

now i wonder where we land

my teeth are sensitive too--
candy smoke strangles them
they are the crown jewels of some British empire

one day at the circus he bought me popcorn, and boy how the unpopped kernels cut my gums. I laughed and the iron taste blanketed my tongue. I noticed my chair had only three legs, and my scarf was red and sticky

o world, how I want to shake your head
and tear wires from the fusebox
to taste the sound of incandescent crackling and burnt popcorn

o shining irises, where is your citrus now?

save me the time.
the rotary patterns
click, click, click
till sound drowns out.

chasing dust,
go 'round my spine
and crack my incisor.

o, i am here.
standing beside you,
and in front you,
and underneath you.

tick. tock.
tick. tock.
till the blood rushes down.