I give you permission

to rip these words and toss them

in the garbage, with your toenails

and your expired cottage cheese.

 

I was tied to the wall

with duct tape and old lace.

There was a leaking pipe above,

dripping on my passive body.

I called the pipe Sir Michael Caine.

His bolts resembled the British actor because

I was blinking fast, in an imbroglio.

He said, “Some men just wanna

watch the world burn.”

 

Next came full-figured water droplets,

sauntering out, seeping from above,

They wore bullet bras and sultry dresses,

ones that would make Jayne Mansfield blush.

Exposed and feminine droplets, together,

to become a thrashing sea.

 

Soon,

my ears popped.

My eyes blinked

because of the television.

It also survived the water,

swimming before my eyes.

It somehow managed

not to electrocute me,

but you know what,

I wished it would’ve.

Fox News

played on a loop.

My eyes blinked 67 times per minute.

2016, I was unzipped, ingressing

into an imbroglio...

connecting bottom and top eyelids,

convincing myself that the bird was out there,

with its black and blue and orange feathers.

A halcyon soaring in the sky I couldn't see

as a crazed clownfish

consumed the duct tape and old lace

that held me.

 

I dived to

the bottom of the liquid depths,

or wherever I was all the time

I was blinking, blinking,

blinking fast.

Merpeople weren’t any better.

Ariel’s slut sister, Aquatta,

forged her finger in my eye

and Trident announced plans

to build a wall to keep my kind out.

 

And so now I blink with my one good eye,

faster than any physicist could ever fathom.

This will cause a second Big Bang.

Instead of an imbroglio unraveling,

like last time, everything will go white.

Whiter than the expired cottage cheese

that rots in your garbage can.

And then, hello. There they will be.

Feathers. Black and blue and orange.

Floating down to God knows where.