past simple 13

Often I wake up to the gray lozenge of sky out the window of my apartment and think, “I just want to rip my skin off,” and there they are, between the recycling bins--the “I Want to Rip My Skin Off” dancers. In pastel tulle and leotards tight over their various enticing lumps, they do high kicks and thrust in unison until I remember it’s spring, and run outside to gather all the flowers and birds and shove them up my ass.

Your parents had awful lives too. You can breathe deeply from your diaphragm and focus on that picture of your wife and imagine what it would be like if she was sometimes three inches tall like in the photo so you could fit her completely inside your mouth for a moment, until you become fashion. You are fashion now. “Fuck you, I’m a fancy coat,” you can say. Fashion is all about getting up at 6 am to steal newspapers off peoples’ porches and replace them with fabric samples. It’s about pretending the best asses fit completely in your mouth sometimes even when they’re huge. It’s about deep breathing and wadding all the newspapers into a giant ass. You are a fancy coat and your parents are the space that was there before that coat existed.

“Hot egg power hose massage $1,500
unlimited clean eggs”
was a real ad that we posted together
that was how I found out you know the secret which is
that watching your entire family suddenly decay
is actually kind of funny
when a Rod Stewart song is playing.

The purpose of dancing is writing the secret,
but hardly anyone understands that language.

We get shitfaced at a party attended by everyone
who has ever hurt us
our bodies moving in unison
to the increasingly stupid music,
and as we intentionally twirl into one
of those trays of pale flavorless raw vegetables and ranch dressing
my only thought is your eyeliner smells fantastic,
I didn’t know eyeliner could smell like anything.

People think it’s bad to be exclusively interested in sex, but the exclusiveness of my interest allowed me the only known escape from despair—becoming a black light poster. A black light poster continuously incandesces a single image--a unicorn, a crystal ball, etc—in in colors equivalent to the sound of an airhorn. I blast an airhorn so everyone looks at me and then yell, “I CAME HERE TO FUCK.” A fluorescent two-dimensional representation of a crystal ball conveys only one message: “I AM A CRYSTAL BALL.” Those colors can only signify one thing at a time.

I go up on the roof to talk to Mr. Titsky. He is the funniest person in the world, but I’m the only one who can see him. The roof reminds me of the treehouse where I used to hide from my insane drunk mom as a child. All my favorite things were there, wrinkled from the rain. I warned Mr. Titsky about the rain but every time I see him he’s more wrinkled. He doesn’t care, he’s the funniest person in the world.

When everyone was playing pianos with their elbows and having threesomes with Buddy Holly and giving the neighbors shoeboxes of their own poop as presents. I’ll admit all I know about history is from Little Richard’s biography, but that admission does nothing to solve the problems of the present, like finding the neighbors. I’ve been walking around with this shoebox for so long I don’t remember where I live. But sometimes I hear piano from an open window and I stand immersed in the music like a liquid, outside of time, just glad my box isn’t empty.