There is no snow, a left turn is a careening roll
7, 8, 9 times, all along the road
Until the carriage turns over and makes us again feel whole
We count the moments that it stays, before it encrypts code
Juxtapose, lizards and rats, seagulls and bats
The underlying message is psychological attack
And when she opened up her mouth she let out a hack
So devastating and depressing that she turned and spat

These old bones and these old dreams are a glimpse of what's passed
And though the skies are turning gray, the blues, in mind, will last
A silver lining is a metaphor, it's never really been
A line designed to separate the sadness from the sin
My friends tell me I am a crosswalk between truth and hate
But in the end the truth is those who despise can relate
Detesting the human race is something worth the time
That's taken to reflect on my stubborn, fizzled mind

A shotgun is all we need to see the light of day
And one bullet is all it takes for them to steal it away
So grab your jewelry and your cash and clip them to your vest
Because your family wants to know the score when you lay to rest
Faultless isn't really a word, thoughtless is a theology
You say spell cat, I say spell Keynesian economy
Aristotle spent years trying to prove epistemology
Existentialism wiped him out with one written dichotomy.

Waiting for my ride to get to the drop of dreams
And when I take just enough I will be caught up in screams
The world around is shaking violently and everything gleams
And the golden from the sunshine on the buildings are my streams
I want to lie in branches made of paper and long legs
Keeping our eyes open, we're all stepping over eggs
Is it any wonder why my strife and struggles bleed?
A warm body and an acid bath are all I truly need.

She might laugh if she read this
at the flat little version of her
that lives in my mind.
She may laugh
at my comparison of her
to a hideous sea spider
but hear me out
it could be touching.

David Foster Wallace wrote:
“Since pain is a totally subjective mental experience
we do not have direct access
to anyone or anything’s pain but our own;
and even just the principles
by which we can infer that others experience pain
and have a legitimate interest in not feeling pain
involve hard-core philosophy—
metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, ethics.”

"[Lobsters] do have an exquisite tactile sense,
one facilitated by hundreds of thousands of tiny hairs
that protrude through their carapace.
Although encased
in what seems a solid, impenetrable armour,
the lobster can receive stimuli and impressions from without
as readily as if it possessed a soft and delicate skin.”

and so

“We lift lobsters out of the bag
or whatever retail container they came home in
…whereupon some uncomfortable things start to happen.
However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance,
it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water."

As much as I cannot comprehend the pain
of the exquisitely tactile lobster
in a *** of boiling water,
I wonder if I could
walk a mile in a lobster’s 8 minuscule shoes
and I wonder
what it might mean or not mean to her
with her armoured yet acute exoskeleton
to be back at home with her father.

They might try to butter you up
or snap elastic bands
around your oversized claws
and use a wooden spoon
to try and nudge your thrashing, clinging arms
back into the ***,
but remember:
lobsters can live to be over 100 years old
and grow to over 20 pounds in size
which is very large for an aquatic insect
and remember that they are marine crustaceans of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws.

And DFW famously said,

“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.”

and he's not a lobster either

Lidless wreath
Blind me with your teeth
Bone white, chalk lines; bitter retreat

I’ll sing through the embers
Of our charred reverie
A brick & mortar apartment
Holding three dead children
We flee.

Everyone’s sleepwalking through city square
It’s twelve fifty seven
And seventy families have bled black against Israel’s rockets

Come Sunday morning
The drunks in my hometown
Will be too hungover to recognise their own faces
While Palestinians across the world
Will have to sort through the bones of dead relatives

This country was built on colonial empathy
Freedom from suffering through self-absorbed apathy

We’re all sewn to our seats
Caring for nothing

Dragging my head on the ground
No one, no one’s
I’m catching death on my lips

Sliver off my flesh
Heart’s beating bruises
Well, there’s nothing here but nothing
So give up

Won’t you wear me like a sweater?
Drape me loose across your legs?
Tie me to the bottom of your nothing head?

Kiss me till I turn to dust
Kiss me till I turn

I’ll believe in something when I’m dead
We’re all just passing over each other’s empty skin
Don’t pretend anything
Life’s as worthless as it seems

There is smoke between your braces
My teeth shatter on touch
It is dry ice; a phantom
There is a blur in your speech
Blood trickles down your gums
And onto your tongue
Stop
Please, stop
Sometimes I wake
To your mouth sealed shut
Because you'd clenched your jaws so hard that blood filled your mouth
I haven't figured it out, but I think
It is the wisp of a nightmare that haunts you
It carries into morning
Settles in the crook of your teeth
To spill long into evening
Look at me
I’m sorry
I bring out the worst in everyone
I trace phantoms into corpses
Long dead but still living in me