Text

centuries churn out papers filled with
faded writing. lysistrata and all those
dick jokes i remember my professor talking
about, as he gestured with his hands, eyes
on the clock, waiting for a quarter to ten.

my century began at eighteen and i
still can taste ink on my fingers. that
queer taste of black that
reminds me of shakespeare,
of me at fifteen, watching
romeo scream in an strange
english tongue, a gun in hand.
the anachronism of it all.

my mind was stuck on rev
seven years ahead and now my
pen has gone dry. i've looked for
the ink in between the cracks of
broken eggs, the glaring yellow eye
not reminiscent of life but of decay.

as the pills march down my throat
like nazis, goose stepping in the soft
flesh, i see them absorb all the
thought, that i should have
wrought. that brought color into
my face when a boy asked me to
write a poem for him, his grey eyes
pausing for a moment on the waiting
white blank page.

the white blank page that mocks
me now. lysistra fucked it up when
she brought in the nude Peace,
dividing up her breasts and cunt
into territories for male consumption.
and i fucked it up when i turned to
the doctor and said,

'give me anything to make the thoughts
go away.'

my century ends now.