My tongue sharpened today
Angles fell off it like classroom fancies
Rationalised to a point, its first act
Was to knock out my fangs from behind.
I stumbled about the house
Slopped through the bathroom door
And foamed at the toilet seat, a
Wave broken over a rim of briny coral.
My salt winked about the walls, around the tap, between the wiped tiles
In the shower head of porous sponge
The seaweed in the pipes crawled up
And drowned me in the sickly sweet.
Downstairs smelt the same, logically the sea dumped down
Underwater fish glided past my window, all with the same
Grim face against the mirrors, aping the ocean
With me trapped inside.
I turned on the same song, fifteen times,
The sound tried to reach me with such ambition
But it floated to the top, belly up in its bubbles
Ridiculous, I scratched the date on the seafloor and entered the kitchen.
Drips everywhere, grease stalactites, from the tiles, the yawning oven, the spatulas
A Cretaceous museum where savagery is kept
In little plastic boxes, with clear peelable lids
A fresh, messy ****.
In the hall the grey light descends through slit windows
Colour settling at the bottom like grit, all the greys so tall
Give the narrow rectangle an aftertaste of dust
Just one keeper before me
It devours my key, hacking as it gobbles
But it does not anticipate my twist
I gut it from inside, it spits its meal back at me
And I swing its limp, dead frame 90 degrees.
Stepping out feels like a moonwalk, with Houston's neutral formulas
Unheeded in my ear, finally I can greet the clouds, that probably escaped,
Like me, fumes from the chimney
Pale and fading away from lack of auspicious sun.
