i'll never be a poet

tattoo tearstains

i swung over rivers as a spider monkey
silverback you rose up trunks slow and steady

small, chittering,
rice grains rattle in my empty vessel

your glass was either empty or full-
you clever schrödingerian fool.

fashioned myself to be your saviour
wove my own tapestry of truth
slung round mine shoulders wide but soft and
pinchable, meltable, flabby,
weak.

the ropeburn you get from the steady climb looks good on you.
i see, you've folded them into a knitted blanket: who
is it for?
your next soul?

please, tattoo these teary trail stains on my cheeks
gild meandering rivulets in embossed golden marble veinules
blooming across peeling skin like lightning.
teeth, gnash on the rubber of this heart forever
even when warm blue blood has clotted and flaked over
and it's nothing more than a flattened cow tongue.

God, i've never felt so clayey in my life.
broken vessels indeed, not-alabaster-but-sootier jar
flow, water, flow
trickle down the holes i poked in my wet chubby sides.
no change to weight nor shape
but, volume, ah,
i'll be empty.

that's a good thing, isn't it?

no

figures