i'll never be a poet

pearls

"have some," you said,
tipping the plastic straw
dangerously close to my left nostril.
i puckered my lips over the hole and
sipped.
an injection
of milky cough-syrup-sweet tea
shot onto my tongue,
freezing my tastebuds.

then, slime bullets attacked!!!! - three of them hitting my open tongue, burying their wet selves like self-planting mines - a fourth and fifth, i could see now, were next in line in the shaft - i could see the cracks in their pearly surface- devious smiles cocked at my throat. i spat them out so fast like you wouldn't believe, bouncing off the side of the road like rubber, a watery trail staining the pavement like a heart murmur; they settled and melted like deflating blobfish a few stones away. the other two, i blew back through the pipe with great repulsion, the little sacs plopping back into the tea like squeezed turds. they swung up the wall of the cup and fell back, evil pinballs sliding back down into their origin down below. i peered through scrunched eyelids at the pond of gelatinous tadpole eggs, imperfectly round and fat and juicy and fleshy. this was fool's caviar. they sloshed around the light brown swamp surface at the bottom of the plastic cup, a column of more plastic stabbing through, seeds waiting to be hatched and swim around like larvae. i could see the little spermy creatures sprout tiny legs, sprawling in the water, then the flagella shrinking into a pointed butt while two bulbous eyes grow from the fishy skull and an air sac blows up under the chin. i saw them leaping- no, flying- from the river of sugared milky pond water, onto my skin, into my mouth, down my throat, and when i gargled and coughed more eggs burst out, a necklace of them falling into the next awaiting plastic cup.

"no thanks," i said,
tilting the cup
back to your face hole.