Brown bottles of cold beer
with a short walk up the street

my feet, they meet
absolutely absentmindedly

It costly exactly ten dollars, thirteen cents
for a glass pack of this beer
and yet you've cost
four years to present
in presence

you're a whole lot more intoxicating
for a shorter time, much more than this pack
much more dreaming
without the fun
without the end
to this long held
hang
over

where is the happy ending when it comes to mental illness?

I miss the crickets. I miss the frogs.
I miss the smell of my skin, my perfume in my bed next to wood and hot night air that speaks more to things of mystery than the dark of the night can.
I miss the sky.

No, I really miss the sky.
The crop of trees and the clarity that allows for you to look at galaxies and talk about what it is
and how small it feels to be human.

How mortal it feels to be willed to wants at the tug and pull of every emotion.

I miss them.
I miss them.

I miss their arms, tangled legs, and sweaty curls.

Their smell that differentiated from the nape of their neck to their cheek to their thigh.
The sweetness of their salvia. The unbounded love. The innocence. The fresh, sensitive pain.

I am numb. I yearn for something greater such that my heart aches and I tremble with premature grief every time I close my eyes and breathe. I think of your face. Not a day has gone by.

I love your memory. I pray it lessens in it's hurt, but that it never leaves me.

I miss those California stars.

Deep as the motives of an empire,
his chest rises and falls
as quickly as kings through centuries.

---

You may be marooned in my bed,
     but of all the boys that have been lost
in the blueish depths left on my neck,
     I'm glad you lingered there

Broken focus with broken dreams, everything isn't always what it seems.
It's a faux facade, a selfish show
I look back and see I did not grow
Look at the reflection,
all you see is the beauty in your strong jaw.
Hold it with your strong hands. You look strong.

If you appear to be strong, do you eventually become strong?

People with lean and depend and take shelter
with and under your jutting cliff,
your face turns to stone, your body; stiff.
The drizzling sizzling acid rain is your fault.
from you taking too long of showers or not taking the bus
This       will become your drowning glory.
Those    that have taken shelter have taken root,
they      will help hold you steady,
they      will absorb some tainted rain like it singe.

But you can see their silent screams in the brown tips of their hands/leaves.
They are suffering from your mistakes,
seeking shelter under you from your acid rain through your completely selfish strength.

nyet
it's Russian for no and my cobbled language of bourgeois slang for not yet

and

I think about you

a lot

too much
for me to be okay with you and other girls

cut your nose off to save your face

a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog
a girl I know got the tip of her nose bitten off by a dog

and I drink out of a broken crystal goblet
over a man who made me feel feelings for a month

***

half here in a 1.5x body
six inches above the national average height
I didn't notice when I was marooned in the clouds

now a pariah afraid of birds (SQUAWK)  

(CAWING)

"It's too foggy to notice much here"
"Too bad I didn't pay attention"

(RIBBING)

too b a d
so   s a d

That nobody sad I was sick till it was too late…

…now I've got smack on the brain, nothing in my ****, and empty pockets for innumerable bills

except I always find money for *****, whose blurry touch tells me not to feel, too feel, and to speak.
I wonder when I became ******** and when I stopped being exceptional.
Maybe they're synonymous?

IDK **** K I L L ME, maYBE
This is too long of a poem for anyone to read it

i rub my feet to think
^a criticism he had

you small smell
tell me how i once knew you?
and then tell me why i once bent my body around you
to repair a doomed and deeper well

"I don't want realism I want magic"

                     lapping up liquor like a cat

and the man who loves me won't talk to me back
and the man who doesn't is the one I love

and he tells me of the girls he's dreaming of

the caked on makeup melts of my facade
as I spend all my money I saved for abroad

you're not clean enough for me
you're not mean enough to me

cold and heavy with illness and spite
there is no rest for the wicked this night

I swallow your story and

I WAIT I WAIT I WAIT

as civilizations collapse and--there's an uprising in Egypt!?!
and Kayne West releases another album and I listen to it when I kiss a girl and all I can think of is man,

I would make a great celebrity

I don't want you to **** me, I didn't know that-that-that text meant you were announcing you wanted to bounce back to my ***** and I

don't think I would say yes at first, to spite you.

KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVK­V
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV

I­'m a mess. I love it. Everything is going perfectly and I'm b u s y torturing artists and dancing with queer girls in Oakland because I like getting what I want

        because when I was younger I wanted to be a femme fatale
and here I am. Playing the villain
has been far more interesting that anything that I can lie up
and it's laughable that all my stories are true and that girls spread their legs and hold my hand after less than three hours of knowing me if I want to whisper in their ear.

KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVK­V
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV

I­'m desensitized. I like liking, I like lust, I like love. I'm capable of human emotion, just let me wrap the world in a thunderous revenge for the piety I have shown thus far and I will show you a good time out in the Mission when you text

at 6 on a Friday night when I smell trouble, decay, *****, and light
and ask me what I am doing
right now

and I get nostalgic for the view of a smooth set of shoulders between my white sheets
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV­KV
KVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKVKV
I­ am young, I am alive. I will take advantage of those two things.

                                                        ­                           ^^^^

"Find the loophole, step on through;
to a fantastic place; to you it's new!"
the Ringmaster bellowed into the crowd
his corners all quirked and perked.

"If nothing is aboslute, then isn't that an absolute?"
"Your clipped wings and speech have tethered you, birds of a feather!
whisper Can you not see? (They're all on their toes)
Someone else controls you and he and she and we and you can't do anything without them knowing exactly what you do!
Your revolutions? Why, they are only circles!"

"All you can do is stretch and push these rules and binds.
Shape them as you will with the will of your mind.
There is always an exception, there are no exceptions.
Tend to your flock, I'll tend to mine
In this we have our own confine."

They all jeered with comical cheer
for the show had been quite queer

I close my eyes,
while walking,
remembering

"To Autumn" by Keats

and how it feels to crush an acorn under my heels
and how it feels to pluck a red leaf off an oak tree

and how it felt to be young
and how it felt to be young

and how that every memory is shrouded in fog
and how every recalling warps their accuracy
and how it felt to be an unwanted outsider

and how after I was wanted, after some some summer, heat faded, I came

it was marked, everything changed, because I chose to be different and difficult,
and that was better, like the dry leaves, it is delicate, crunching easily underfoot
spidery veins all brown and beautiful, thin and papery, but it is interesting, and

red, and orange, and purple, and leaves sweep up in the pull of the breeze and

I have never truly believed in God, but I have always believed in the wind

I felt it on the nape of my neck in my youth it held me
by the scruff, but with age it was covered and my own
and my hair grows long, brown, tumultuous, tangled,

it is my trace, billowing, behind me as I walk, steadily
facing the against wind, neither breathing nor praying

because the wind in my face, swaying
filling me with smells of earthy decay
as the machine of leaves crumble, that

is more beautiful than all
and the ending of this is
all my beginning

I wonder
I wonder
I wonder

I.

If I tried to kiss you
when we are both drunk
if you'd kiss me back again

II.

If I showed up to a show
and you saw me from the stage
if it'd startle you enough

to realize I'd come back

I want to come back
and get you.

III.

If I stopped answering
you'd say what I've wanted you to.

IV.

If I kissed you in a way
that felt like more than a regular

If any of you boys would be worth it.
Would it be worth it?

my bed is an altar, undivided, and
a table, a desk

and seemingly somewhere
   where I cannot rest.

I had a dream
that a man and I were making a painting together,
each of us making one quick stroke before sliding it back to the other.

We were painting a pair of eyes,
blue, like I used to paint.

I would concentrate with my thin brush
and turned the hairs in eyebrows into
wriggling creatures of the sea,
with a silver shine to each of their scales
as they dashed and dove,
before breaking the surface

During our painting he tried to convince me
to run the company that produced these canvases
to run the art gallery that featured artists
to run anything, and he became exasperated
while I just smiled, squirming a little
for all I wanted to do


             was to draw a pair

                                           of great big blue eyes

                 as deep as the ocean

                                             and as shiny
                                                               as fishscales

In a brutish manner
I raise a glass to Billy Collins
my lips stained purple,

from

seven ninety-nine ($)
dark Chilean wine

that is infused with strawberries, cherries,
and do I detect the taste of…alcohol?

My packaged delights, basics from Safeway.
Green, red, white vegetables with origins unknown
had clattered, frozen, out of a bag, not fifteen minutes ago

I snap the bag with a satisfying thwack,
the chicken is ready from a microwaved attack.

But the noodles, oh, so sweet.
Plump little bags of cheese and oh--brie!
Sweet no matter what sauce, I drown and I savor

Wrapping the package with greens and with flavor.

I curl up in repose, stuffed to the brim
swirling my glass, getting seconds again.

you:** stuck in a bivouac that I said I outgrew
me: taking my wants from some list I once knew

I constantly compound, touching just grinds,
for ever-expanding still means there are binds.

Now that I have it, I sputter, all spent
My strengthening will? Only stands bent.
Shaking, I spit, then sway where I stand.
Uncertainty forces a reach for more hands

I had come unglued, and you’d had no clue,
now I lie awake, losing memories of you.
A catalyst came, yet something is waning,
so I ask myself, from what is this draining?

There are many limitations sometimes. Of course these are only restrictions we place on ourselves, but we groom certain communities to fulfill a certain appearance and dismiss the breakers of unspoken rules. Don't drop the status quo.

Paradigm.

I want to write and not write about things. I don't know.
No, I do know. I want to write without the stigma that these topics bring.

I want to write a poem about Facebook. See how much appreciation that gets.
Poetry about Facebook won't be liked often.

Write about how it ****** me off that your ex boyfriend (that I dumped, by the way) has a new girlfriend with better taste and better photography skills than me. Remember how I made fun of his ex's for that? They're doing that about me now, I stomped on his heart. I teem with insecurity thinking about it. ******* selfish, I feel like a *****.

How I'm tired of being self-depricating because I don't want to seem like an *******. I've come a long way as a person and I'm not allowed to brag about it. I'm barely allowed to take a compliment or I'll look like I'm preening.

Write about how I'm tired of being kinda ugly sometimes.

Write about how I had *** with someone, how when I told someone else, I could see them and society drawing a big "****" crown of judgement, and how that's ******. I wish we could all grow up.

I wish I could explain that my apathy is, to a certain degree, purposeful. Because looking at feminism articles every day made me feel like ****. I felt like a victim constantly, and I alienated myself from making friends with normal people because I was an extremist. I got tired of constant misery and misinformation. The feminist community was cannibalistic too, and I don't think I wanted to make friends with such hyper-aggressive people.

Write about how I want to be a writer and how I can only write three sentences and then I look at the screen hopelessly. How lame.

I'M SO ******* NAIVE BECAUSE
I want so badly to be different in a better way, but I know I'm just the same.
I want to be able to change the world and I know I can't,
it doesn't matter anyway.

I haven't been able to cry in three months. I'm tired of trying to find my brand of catharsis.

wrestling with metaphorical hard-ons

for money for money for money


and it
                    as a mean to be mean

I am ****** in the long run
for wanting the in-between

I find my self stressing and scatting,
foaming

and spent

for a non-existent God
I cannot repent
I cannot repent

for selling my soul
                                   to Satan (the great)

at eight years old

I've come unglued
You said once you need me, but I need you
I had no idea and now you have no clue

You're miles ahead while seconds are lost
I'm turned over every inch
from boil to frost

but you're untouchable, at least you say
till I wander into a dark room
in some way, some day

But still I don't know if I'm on your mind
and I still can't know if you're still just mine
or if you'd say, if I could ask
you're
still
mine
but I still think of you, it still lasts.

sorry for nothing-
---you stupidshit
sorry for nothing-
tightfisted-----kid
sorry for nothing-
for nothing, at all
sorry for nothing-
now---don't---call

an anesthesia as quiet as

mustard gas
with it's creeping cloud passing through barbed wire with a magnificent yellow intangibility;
slow-moving and inevitable, unavoidable, and deathly--
--it's silent stalking is the breath of the Holy Ghost.

an anesthesia as visible as*

a mute scream
from the cracked beaks of all-black birds as they *croak outside the thin, thin, thin, panes;
birds ruffling and rustling like reptiles that knew better
and beat the game that the mammals never tried.

Pressing, muffling, a heat so harsh and deep I wake from my sleep, running away from the pull of a endless dark tide. So dark the breaks cannot be seen in the black gulf. I am haunted.

I am haunted.
I am haunted.

I cannot sleep, I cannot dream. There is no rub--all folly and hubris brings the death knell.

Where is the source?
To whom must I kneel?

I can feel are my bruised knees from falling prey to false idols,
                   but all I can hear are the creaking ropes of hung robbers.

poor, slumped over and broken strangers
for a penny, share their paltry stories, one by one
snippets and scatters of half-truths and fables,
so raunchy they'd make Aesop blush.
don't deprive me of your salacious souls.

rented sea views with mirrors and doors,
unlocked drawers and white ***** floors,
with freshly dead ***** in claw-footed tubs.
rich luxury rich luxury rich luxury rich luxury
does that second home taste too sweet?

ears swallowed by bubble bath suds
head underwater, eyelids crushed and
stinging from the acrid chemical perfume;
drinking the bathwater in an unclean tub,
tasting notes of freesias and ***** green-blue.

I want to steal

the things

I want

like money
like knowledge
like talents

too hard
too hard

sugared fingers, the smell of Chanel
and I am flushed on red berry wine

and the charms of someone, dear,
who I would like to call "Valentine"

la vie en la rose
this red stains lips pink and
I see in pink, everything around me

as I dip my nose to my wrists, inhaling

Sicilian oranges, Calabrian bergamo
Indonesian patchouli, Haitian vetiver
Bourbon vanilla andd white musk

I giggle coquettishly and I am blushing,

For these sweet nothings
mean very much to me

Acrid stenches of contrived action
stain his sloppy, uneven speeches

gallantry is unnerving, obnoxious
to me, even in the grandest favors.

I sniff with all my offended senses.
To a bloodhound nose, it's cloying.

He smells like he's trying too hard,
trying too hard smells sour, biting.

I prefer challenges from a cunning,
a silver-tongued fox. Let me chase.

Subtle while retaining the ability to
remain brazen, aye, there's the rub.

Chomping at the bit, the overeager
and easily pleased are not my kind,

the authentic and untamed always
give me more rise than an easy bait.

a burned chair
six cigarettes stubbed out
an empty bottle of champagne; absinthe

"If only."

a long whistling breath precedes a long draught of red wine.
a long day.
a longer remembering.

"If only I weren't stupid."

I rub my feet in silence.

When I was a child, I did not wish to speak as a child. I wished for adulthood.
I may have had a lilting laugh, but I spoke and thought like a child shouldn't.

I wished for adulthood every day, for the horizon's beckoning light--the guarantees promised by windows and my family's opportunities--of a life worth living and getting all I both wanted and needed, and I did. By the time I had grown in stature I had already put away childish things.

I find great satisfaction in being an adult, and a woman.
I belong to no one, but others belong to me. I feel whole.

red jawed, aspirin(s)
waxy swollen gums
grinning white teeth,

grinding down to spiked nubs,

^^^^^^^^^

little points,
chewing up.

;'.',;.;';'.,';.','.';',.

all the better for spitting acid.

glass bubbles in saliva
thoughts putter on a bedroom floor
sweatshirts left on somewhere better,
and I want less of wanting more

clinking teeth and unmet gaze
staring l-shapes from feet to toes
the empty town is a soundless maze
and with all of you, the sounds impose

Everything is too soaked in wine
for me to comprehend why

why
why

they'd be so cruel
in misunderstanding

drink me up, me
maybe then you'll feel sober

tucked between the stars and the skyline

I only get to pick one

the inevitable loneliness of
a) of watching a galaxy in all its splendor
b) watching everyone else at night

The salt is taken with the sugar, taken full in stride
No word or sound could ever take your mother's brother's pride
The trick is in the shimmy that gets you through the door
Getting naked under clothes, clean the bathroom floor
Slip the key and turn the lock
Tell him you just forgot
You weren't supposed to visit the craig of his mind

The ink of your skin smells like sin
Of tangled legs and sheepish grins
Your heavy eyes tell me lies
Your neck leans, your shoulders cry
You've slept and fought and thought a lot
You weren't supposed to stay in the craig of his mind

You're new and used but news to me
A stag before you're now set free
Damp and twisted, your fur is mussed
Stamped and bothered, too much fuss.
You now wait in the dark crook of your sleeve
But by and by I have taken my leave

Meant to go so mean, my stomps weren't kind
I wasn't meant to leave the craig of your mind

antagonized, sullen, and unshakeable,
I rest under the shade of a heavy tree,
a crepuscular creature who lives most
at edged breaks of sun, dusk and dawn

my stamina grows in strength, as does my patience and durability,
but I know my insatiable pursuits will fade, or they'll be yielding;
if I want things, I will get them, I will have them, and they are mine

I look over, past the horizontal thing, "edge"
with all the weariness of a battle-scarred lion,
silver-striped with the accumulated congealed
****** flesh of foes under my scuttling claws
that scamper down the ridges of the slower,
quieter animals that I have singled out as mine,
until I am done with games and rip out spines

I am not long in tooth, but I am experienced enough,
to the point, where I do not want to fight very long
for what I have earned, and for what is entitled to me,
and if I must fight long, afterwards, I am vindictive

I look at the horizon, with all the prowess possessed
in my being, in my breeding, ingrained in my bones
I have a greater strength than I have even begun to
even actualize, and I just only started flexing, slowly

I am greedy for the world, every bad beast and cur,
with marrow in their bones, I wish to tussle with,
I will be ready for you, I await you with a sly grin,
come call me at home, for I will be biding, till then

Men become boys in the cradle of my lap, comfortable
  as I twist the tufted curls behind their soft ears,
  and I wonder how easy it would be
to cleave them in two with a rusted fish hook.

Upside down is my right side up
With too-thin skin, splayed legs
and lips ****** of substance,
I lie quietly on rumpled sheets.

a word some say that I've said too much:
s-o-r-r-y sorry sorry sorry

It loses sincerity when uttered often,
but I am sorry, I haven't said it enough.

is my chagrin charming?
is my self-deprecation darling?

(no response)

I'm told (insert compliment).
I believe it, I have heard.
I both love and loathe myself.

******* and flagellation,
brought on by the same hand
penance, paid; insatiable, still

Just sit, ******
and watch a martyr at work.

wake up

desensitized, oversanitized

want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied­
want
unsatisfied

Dab all over with aches, pains, and itches.

Struggle with gauche and forced interactions, coworkers and family. Friends?

No God.

                                                           ­   POSITIVE THOUGHTS
                                                        ­       POSITIVE THINKING

cloying, choking fear.

fear
Fear
FEAR
F E A R

Rub your face in the mirror.

Think deep thoughts that you believe are unique.
They are not. You are very uninteresting, probably.

want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want­
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied*

drink until you sleep,
if not use the pills.

Use both.
Your room is warm.
You will have nightmares.

I was offered ****** once,
in a city now mine,
as I watched two men,
infringe on one's mind.

It created an unusual partnership, and
both men were mad, but
both have experienced
what few can say have.

"No, thank you."
I said, with a bit of a stutter,
to the (obviously) terrible
and perilious offer.

Curiousity still ensnared me a
little
inside,
and I wonder if I'll say
yes,
or maybe,
next time.

I would not say yes,
if my body was young,
but when I am withered,
why not just once?

Please give me a woman with at least the *** of Brigitte Bardot
or a man with a silver tongue, in speech, amongst other things,

who will kiss well, be as dark as a sunless cave, clever as a fox,

and let us be infatuated and watch French movies in the dark,
until we **** each other into oblivion and become enamored,
and set each other on fire with the incinerating aspects of love.

Yours Truly,

Glasser
aka Kay
aka Glasser

sinking into the sourceless fog
sinking into the view from across
sinking into the detached crowds
sinking into the hot, flushed shame
sinking into the worrisome slouch
sinking into the city streets
sinking into the bleak thoughts
sinking into the humid nightmares
sinking into the silence at dawn

while I sink with a slump towards the bottom of a down
where is the fight against the deep and dark drown

I had forgotten there were emotions other than pain.
Thank you, please continue to remind me.

Answering to no one, and
obligations do not exist, if unanswered.
I want plastic tubes of garishly pink lipstick, with their
greasy glitter soaking in the folds of tissues.

I'll take the hard edge off of my face,
dust off my gilded tongue,
and promptly kiss a bathroom floor
after consuming something illicit that tingles my nose,
before dying with your blade buried in me, inelegantly.

shedding hair
everywhere

and having no qualms, a masterful alchemist, when it comes to mixing medications and liquids with no fear of death.

clicking

quiet glow

slipping into a world of silver and green screens
to know the more interesting people than I know

Hail Mary! A pseudo-Buddhist
practices pragmatic paganism
with the guilt of a Catholic,
due to their samaric duties
handed from the true-blue Krishna.

But soft, through yonder window
a star collapses and light
is ****** through and destroyed
in a black hole foretold by
Hawking and, why not, Hubbard.

People are polyamorous
for their mono/poly theistic god(s).

But, how dare they be so bold
as to think they know about
anything about any-*******-thing.

You can spend years, tears, and fights in unmatched white sheets of your dreams. Or rattle in an train to Istanbul, under their arm.

His curls smell like sweat and he tastes like sweet, touched with hair and a scruff of a beard. He mingles Arabic, English, and French and you feel obsolete.

But do not fall in love with a boy from Lebanon
because sooner or later he will me gone.

IF you get me a phone made of gold
I MIGHT call, finally.

But I can't listen to such pretty words
out of a chunk of plastic and glass.
...you're better than that...

Here's the plan:
This Wednesday,
meet me.
Someplace you like;
you always know the right place.

Standing, waiting, my face blank, uncaring and staring
at the garish colors of their cheap and ill-fitting clothes.
Cramming in, fingers all greasy, raucously laughing,
jabbering *******, braying useless information, loudly.
Swarming, idly in hot  little dark holes of rooms, making
a suffocating stench from ragged mouth-breathing.  

Obnoxious.
******* disgusting, everyone.
Don't ******* touch me.
This is overwhelming.

"There's too many people in here."
You sidle up to me, saying what we're both thinking, and then we leave.
Both of us glaring at the ******* shuffling slowly,  in the way,
unable to meet our height or eyes, they remain glued
to the tiny screens in their sweaty and hot little hands,
as their annoying children are screaming and running.

You.
You, with your ****-brown eyes.
Silent and stoic, with a hard-edged jaw. Are you ******* me?
Like not making eye contact with me is going to shame me,
stripping me of something that you never even bestowed?
You think I'm obscene?
Mister, look at you.

I am tired, but, I am okay. I am fine.
I don't care what you otherwise say.

Alive and sober, awake and dying.

I am improving, actively evolving.
I am not devalued or retrograding.

*******.
Don't not look at me, as though I were a freak.
Don't sneer and scoff, and judge me, as meat.
*******.

You think you know me better than me?
You think you could even convince me differently?
                am I right, or am I right?

Go ahead, lock your jaw, frown and furrow your brow, you magnanimous hypocrite.
We're both autonomous, and rich, in Ameri-*******-ca, with freedom out the *******.  

You're free to judge me.
I'm free to say *******.

We both bleed red blood.
We both will do as we will,
loving, *******, fighting,
drinking, *******, coping,
hiding, hurting, smelling,
crying, begging, hating,
breathing, needing, eating,
sleeping, living, and dying
under the great majesty of

                                                               ­        A *******
                                                         ­            INDIFFERENT
                                                 ­                       UNIVERSE

where we both need to
stop thinking differently.

because there is nothing, there is something
an engima, some colorless-genderless name
that holds me by the scruff-nape of my neck
and pours me a glass of water that now fills

fills me up more than a garish kitch thing-y
with a name and a brand and a plastic case

I sweep up the broken glass and pay,
to make it better, I'll pay for mistakes

I wish I could have a big cry or a big bitter laugh
or bind up a wound, but, they would be falsified
it'd be fake and contrived, all crocodilian in ways

but there is just nothing, which is something,
which is to say that in here there's not a thing

I will wait on the banks, I will shine my little scales,
and I will be golden, and not be a thing really, at all