It’s unlikely but you never know, it could happen
the beach boys got one thing right it sure would be fucking nice
— @clebdotcom on Twitter
When will we admit that the cruelty starts
when your first two cells meet and say yeah,
we’re doing this. No matter how many times I get naked
in front of my candles and tell myself I WAS BORN IN LOVE
AND I WILL DIE IN LOVE, I still catch my reflection
in the bank’s one-way windows and I’m like, god,
this bitch again? even in spite of my boots and sexy cheetah coat.
If something unusual would happen, like a dude
has a heart attack on the sidewalk in front of me and he drops
his groceries and the city bus totally creams his honeycrisps,
if I run over and mouth-to-mouth that situation
and oh now he’s bleeding somehow, if I tear off the sleeve
of that sexy sexy cheetah coat and tie off that situation,
then afterwards rinsing the blood, naked again, I repeat
I WAS BORN IN LOVE AND I WILL DIE IN LOVE
and I mean it so hard that a hot pink halo
erupts above my precious head.
I’ll take anything for $100, Alex
I thought that knowing something about anything would help,
so I pulled the first book I saw from the shelf in the library’s basement
and tried to read about pulsars, which sounded like beating stars
and made me put two fingers to my neck to feel that arterial throb.
I forgot that I was uninterested in knowing
more about myself. I read about luna moths,
who are born mouthless, then die soon after. That one was too easy,
and I have learned that metaphor, though felt, gives way to senselessness.
I wanted to feel like an animal and describe it to you,
so I crouched on the bathroom floor, folding a menstrual cup into myself.
I wondered, is this how animals feel? Absolutely not.
I am least like an animal when I feel like one.
I want what I say to be so unpredictable that you fall over
when I open my mouth. I live inside the Jeopardy computers. I’ll tell you
how many times I can withstand waking up before I just die,
which, for the luna moth, is about seven times. Which, for the pulsar,
is irrelevant, as it is not a human woman.
It’s okay to laugh when I die. We all knew it would happen.
