Cold Beers and Voyeuristic Cannibalism
I’d like to pretend that my hands aren’t dirty
from the soap of mental suppression,
that the callouses are from hard work,
and not from picking my bones back up
off the floor on a daily basis;
ragged, dry, and weary.
Every fairy tale has a root,
stapled into the hard soil of truth.
They all have a moral,
some sort of clerical error
born from life’s shadow.
We watch, hoping to learn
from the missteps of someone
else’s intrepid imagination,
some 4D revelation singing
lullabies to the young heart
of humanity.
And they bend to the fickle
will of greedy creativity,
making the yoke less bitter
so that we can tongue the purge
of denial without pouting.
I’d like to pretend that my hands are clean,
that I don’t whisper cold lies into your palms,
watch you drink from the frosted glass
of my sincerity; Hope that you don’t blink,
that you won’t notice the blood bubbling
up, and over my shiver before you finally
finish this story.
I just want you to understand.
This isn’t poison.
This is merely me bleeding out,
and hoping you’ll learn to love the
taste of fire kissed oxymoronic metaphors,
served up with juiced will and the vegan
flesh of my inhibition.
So that you can see through my eyes,
know where I have been,
and how it felt to be consumed.
-James Kelley 2014, All rights reserved.
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