Just keep talking
eventually you'll
start making sense
of course by then
nobody will be listening.

If I were a peacock,
I would blue-green iridescent burst beauty
pretty would not mean strange or weak
brightness would be bravery, screaming LOOKING THIS GOOD IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN SAFETY FROM PREDATORS
I would love my women drab, concealable, nearly invisible
... maybe some of us are already part peacock

If I were a leopard slug,
I would never worry if I was man enough
I would love all of my hermaphroditic glands equally
or, more realistically, I would be ashamed of all of them equally,
never sure if my gonopore was symmetric enough,
if my translucent blue-white ***** was beautiful enough to ever intertwine and bloom with another's
there would be no gay bars or marriage equality movements or swallowed-wink "no ****"s
no one would tap around your abdomen in search of the right organs before declaring your birthright aptitude in cooking or car repair
you and I, we would follow each other around all night, exchanging playful licks, before impregnating each other, circus-suspended from a tree branch
... I guess that part would be the same

If I were cricket or frog or songbird, my music would be my perfect gift to you.
I would learn guitar and start a band and
everyone would love me
(way more than the bass player)

But I am a man.
I don't know what that means yet.

after julio cortázar*

my bourbon

i drink it at a bar, alone

its translucent honey-color is an axolotl's eye
looking into me

and, like a cortázar story,
little by little,
my bourbon axolotl steals my body,
its soul stealing through my eyes to evict me from this
honestly-not-that-well-kept apart
ment

and i feel my bourbon axolotl eye replacing me
as i am drawn out into its glass prison

and i stare up as my bourbon turns me
gently in my glass
as my bourbon raises me to its lips
sips me
no longer winces
or even registers any emotion on a calm-liquid-surface face
eyes wet and flat and blank as a tumbler ******* deep

and i don't know where i'm going or what i'm becoming but
this feeling of spiraling and draining and emptying
is everything that i know

and there is less and less of me as bourbon stares down
cold
unsmiling
neat
and silently consumes me
and i am disappearing
and i am gone

and bourbon stands,
calm, but not serene,
and bourbon walks to my car, each step carefully measured,
and bourbon drives my car to my apartment
and bourbon sleeps in my bed and goes to my job and collects my paycheck
and bourbon falls into habit and routine
and bourbon feels my
empty.

but having a body, a life, is better than being trapped in bottles and glasses
it's probably better, anyway

and bourbon won't go back, won't trade flesh back for silica,
will keep living unfeeling behind glass-eye walls until skin and sinew unknit

and bourbon is so alien and content that
it never wonders if there is anything more,
never despairs for its ending road,
treasures every drop

bourbon calls this body, this life
top shelf

bourbon knows that **** ain't cheap