death to the hippos.

this spoon will not be useful for scooping out my brain.  it has become necessary for me to consider this procedure, as i am very tired of being conscious and aware.

i remember the last night we were filled to the gills with jameson and melting ice cubes. had to force that last one down, right before i told him where to put his incommunicado. not for the courage, but because i paid for it. the first went down fine. honey. and now my dreams and my reality forget that night ever took place because this shit keeps coming up.

 my past, my love is usually jack in his frilly box. pops when he has had too much to drink or has been wound too tightly. with a garish smile and wide open puppet paws, he shocks every time with keen accuracy.

recently jack has amputated his lower body and gotten himself a fancy new car. bleeding and half dead, he bombs each bridge as he passes. the one up ahead, well, pray my memories have sea legs among all the gore and guts ruining the new car smell, because this bridge is already burning, and jack has not quite mastered reverse.

a good friend of mine wonders at a new lovely in his life. she does not understand his brain. he fears this, like she should. as if being like us, there being more like us, would be a good thing. and send in the serial killers, while you're at it.

we are that bad. feeding frenziedly on love, never full. this empty need to fill a ruptured bicycle tube that is wrapped around the heart. that is as close as anyone can get. never to the blood pumping organ. because it has already been lent out in a gesture of kindness. the last we ever gave. the one that meant everything and ruined us forever, ruined everyone for us. now we thrive on what we see reflected in their arms. the devotion, the admiration.the curiosity into how beautiful we well up in another's eyes never sated.

can we get back what we have given? was it ever ours if we set it free and it headed for the fucking hills? all that makes me who i have been up til now is having it's flames put out by the monster in the loch over the smoking bridge where turning back ran out of options.

without a heart, i need that clown, jack. the proof that once i could feel things not being thrust inside of me. that i gave flowers and brought cheesecake. that i called and cried and came.

 am i grown up. not a question. that fluttery-filled-to my eyes with the back of my throat is a lump of tears feeling. that is the one that tells me who is real and who is trying to close the lid to that frilly box, trying to make that monster crave the remaining flesh. trying to douse the flames in gasoline.

the door is always open.
 the window, broken.
 the attic not obscured.
 it's the basement i fear.
all those stairs.
traveling lower, still.
our clowns,
they all float down here.