Writhing and stretching as if
rising from slumber,
its dead eyes fixed on her flesh

Hungry for meat,
it clawed and scratched,
stripped pointy discolored teeth,
bit hard
at the righteously wet, slurping
crunch
of tissue and bone,
chomping with drunken satisfaction
at the meat
of poor sweet Liberty

This was the unbridled licentiousness
that inspired to form
one
small
***** nailed fist
with which,
without pause,
it stroked itself
into a blood-slippery ******

And all she could do in that moment
was shiver

Hungry as any mortal human being,
you took to it like a baby to the ******.

It feeds you what you didn't know you want satiating a life-blood need
you still won't admit you have.

The suckling is a
click,
click,
clicking
in an otherwise quiet room.

It's a jealous God with a seemingly infinite ***.

and it knows when you're
sleepy,
happy,
irritable,
euphoric,
jubileeted,
despondent­,
enthusiastic,
outraged

because you told it so

with a tap of your finger,
a cartoon heart,
a dramatic pause,
a thumbs-up
a few choice words,
a boycott,
a compulsive search at two-thirty-eight
in the A.M.,
a question mark,

with a modified picture of you
as you wish you were
pending the approval
of too many people you don't really know.

Trust
that it knows your fate
because it is not just omniscient,
omnipotent and omnipresent within inches,
God is inside your head

dripping new utopian milk
with an ever-present, dystopian,
apocalyptic preservative.

You've seen it for yourself
in a popularly tagged photo
seconds ago.

You,
you friend,
you authority,
you faithful follower,
you seeker of the truth,
you know-er of things,
you crusader, with your electronic sword.

But what are you
really
beneath that laughably permeable armor?

You,
You unit,
You fiend
You target,
You product
You data point
You prey,

You ******* user.

But, then again,
who am I to say
if I'm still here and
undeniably thirsty.

I could fall in love with her.

She promises things
and keeps less than half of those
but I don't care.

It's alluring,
coloring in the pieces I could never know.

I imagine giving her some part of myself
but
she's fickle about gifts
and completely ungracious when she
refuses them.

Still,
you've always got a chance with her.
I would, I would make her mine.

But yesterday,
that ***** just won't leave me the **** alone.

"You've a large malignant mass," the Dr told her. She appeared gaunt in the feeble glow of x-rays despite being more than a little over-weight.

She was full of words, good words, too but she said nothing at the news biting ******* her lower lip.

She paid for the visit with a nearly maxed-out credit card. She had never been sick like this before but she had to admit, at least to herself, that she always seemed a little broke.

She lived well, she thought, at least relatively.

But she'd been increasingly more self-conflicted lately and the sensation was that of a gaping and festering wound.

A part of her seemed panicked and another part didn't care at all and, more strange, from the recesses of her bowls, inflamed and angry, came an obscene and lustfully sneering cheer.

Her stomach was queasy. She wanted Jesus Chicken anyway. She pulled into the drive-thru, not for convenience but for anonymity. She ordered the #1, add cheese, with waffle-fries. She also requested several packets of mayonnaise.

She ate greedily thru the traffic with her ******* ready.

She thought, thank God for speaker phone, and called a dude that tried to **** her at a party once because she knew he sold coke. She'd had gotten his number from one of the guys he'd been with that night.

She nearly screamed when he suggested that maybe they could work out a deal.

She heard herself say, "I'll be right over."

She pulled out a pack of unfiltered Pall Mall 100's, lit one, inhaling deeply, then choke-laughed unexpectedly when the DJ said, "this just in folks,

Democracy....,
she's dead."

Monsters, they're real but not what was expected.

You thought they'd be green instead of orange. You pictured fangs, not porcelain.

You expected a lot more blood and gore where there's this methodical, languishing torture.

It's eating babies right now and people call it politics.

It just doesn't work like that.  Like a big switch in my head,  (grubby and greasy with finger prints), buzzing and humming when turned on.  

Actually,  maybe it's just like that but...

the thing is,  if I were to ramble 'bout all the ways you are just so god ******....
well, that's the kind of **** that makes people want to throw up.

So if you could somehow just take my word for it that you are...

that poster that hung on my wall when I was twelve,

a wholesome dream as much as a pornographic one,

****** decadence all mixed up with kittens and puppy dogs,

well then

we could keep on loving and living well and forget about things as pretentious, narcissistic and nauseating as a poem.

I didn't have the right shirt on so she sent me home to change into something more appropriate because the people throwing the party were a little bit more than just well-to-do and I did because I generally don't like to argue but my second choice was no better than the first so I left again and then once more until she was exasperated enough to let my apparel go even though I was still less than presentable and I followed her through room after cavernous room adorned with Botticelli and Goncharova, (that I systematically compared to her physical beauty), and mid-century furniture,  (that made me envision us naked and perpetually *******), until finally we emptied out  into acres and acres of back yard where there were scores of people milling about and a pet killer whale swimming around that would occasionally rise up out of the water to splash guests to their amusement, sometimes grabbing one of them by the leg or arm gently pulling them down to the bottom before releasing them and back up they would come to break the water gasping and giggling which ticked those wandering about but I didn't get what was so funny at all so my face was that of consternation which in hindsight might have been that last straw because she was looking at me, not with the smile she once had of someone completely enamored and enthralled but instead, her countenance was that of someone entirely perturbed and she certainly was with my ****-poor etiquette, lack of insight and my rather limited wardrobe and it was just then that that whale rose up and crashed down sending a massive wave that totally enveloped us making me realize in an instant that she might have been right about my shirt,  for mine was made of silk and certainly it would have been better to be sporting nylon or rayon or,  at least,  something as wrinkle resistant as polyester for she still looked quite perfect smiling back plastic at the raucousness of those watching and I knew then that I wouldn't be seeing these people at the next big party which weighed on me more heavy than that wet shirt and the loss of her crushed me more than if that mighty mammal had landed on my chest but, oddly enough,  when I awoke from that dream, it was with a lightness of relief finding myself lucid again in a world for which I am far better suited.