one forced....salty tear

So, this is one of my older break-up poems. It's about this guy who I tried to be friends with right after we broke up, because (the curse of all curses) we had mutual very good friends. And everything that flew out of his mouth was a shot at me. And it wasn't just my imagination, my friends saw it too. I wrote this poem right after the guy and two of our friends got out of this chinese restaurant we were eating in. There were frogs in a tank in the alcove outside the window. Maybe that's where the idea started.

Serengeti: down in the belly of the beast.

Forgetting the difference

between alligators & your
crocodile smile,

upon your return from your

sacred moonlit swim,

i was flying formations

in your eyes--

slit through the centers;

tongue forked &

lapping up obscenities as i asked,

"how cruel must you be to be kind?"

Once upon a time,

you would have swallowed me--

keeping me whole
in your stomach long enough
to make you real.

and there, where i

set up a dresser here,
a lamp there,
& some curtains to feel more

at home . . .

within the bowels of your existing;

guiding rivers of shit along dark waters,

i screamed:

"O, Cold-blooded Lover,

i'd missed for so long . . .

scale-rimmed Kin, i have been tangled

in the warm wet-work of your throat!"

didn't you notice?

reptilian Bastard

now shredding up my limbs,

eating out

my tiny, chicken heart . . .
masticating my very soul into

itty, bitty, bite-sized pieces.

All the while your face remaining unchanged.

a shiny leather-like handbag. a prize for old women to see.

eyes stony-cold zirconias,

as you sucked the stains left between your teeth

with one forced, salty tear . . .

& a smile.