i want to see you scream,
not because i enjoy the sound,
in fact, to be honest, which i never am,
i can’t stand the sound of your voice,
but don’t take it personal,
i can’t really stand any sound,
and envy the deaf every morning
when the dew drops while robins chirp
along to the empire’s anthem of seasonal dystopian destruction
sold out of the back of an old toyota truck
that has three flats,
and one round, round, round
open your mouth,
wider, wider,
don’t stop just because i didn’t say wider again,
keep on going,
all the way to the floor,
then a little bit further,
i want to be able to step into your mouth comfortably,
so i can better examine what it is you’re saying,
then maybe we won’t have these late-night tete-a-tetes,
and i can get a good night’s rest,
and get up on time to go to work
for one of our sake’s
brutality sometimes looks different upside down,
when a goat is feeding you a three-course
dinner at a restaurant built in the
middle of the forest
that some might describe as enchanted,
and given the fact that there’s a goat chef feeding people,
i can kinda see their point,
but it’s not all that uncommon,
and really, most late-night-stage capitalism
ends in a back-of-the-alley,
back-of-the-creek,
back-of-the-cul-de-sac,
back-to-and-then-from-the-future,
fight to the death,
but without fists
Fred Aiken Writing 