I live for two hours, five hours, bite to bleed.
A cryogenic coma until we begin.

Arguing in vain with the town around me,
over nothing able to be justified, and he and I don't care;
reveling in the confusion of the tri-city area—
drowning our egos and taking our time
until we truce with razor smiles; shift
to removing tongues with pliers in our words.
(living amputation and too much diet coke)

Shouted disclaimers spread to the rest of the state,
in case they never wondered how it feels
to watch a living heart exposed.
He gleamed gold with self-confidence as he cracked his knuckles.
"I'd like someone to hit me, y'know?"
Next to him, Tallahassee rolls her eyes, Tampa looks away.
(I catch his stare. Deo gratias. Deo gratias. Father, Son, and Violent Thoughts.)
Thank God, I whisper, and I am yelling.
He is split from throat to hip and I drain his open truth.

Speaker static shifts the room,
podium to floor.
This isn't over, he says, and we laugh
because nothing we ever say can be proven,
and we intend to prove it all.

I have an incoherent proposal for you.
It is incoherent because I lack both the courage and clarity.

Anyway, as you know this world is riddled with
brailles and imaginary synaesthesic hints over all that seems
to be what it is.

Yes, all that *******.

So here I stand before you.

Punctured and drawn, pulpy and inelegant.
Wry, silly and dire. Cultivated and ridiculous.

It’s.

Scratch that.

In the mind

you have said emotions

we are

not lines.

nope.

Sky wire.

Erm

If

None of what I say is true.

Look past me and see what’s real.

And that.

I’m hoping you want that,

to touch the electric, liquid-ish paths

and vector strings.

If.

I’m a non-bundle of emotions
lately—not sleep though—

and it’s not you.

Just desperate for

not someone.

Just desperate to
get past selfhood
with somebody else
to keep it interesting

and it makes as much sense as anything

so I don’t want to talk ******* but
would you, as a complicated instrument,
like to get outside ourselves
and not play
but be wildly serious?