your heart and the sea

viii. purity?

im unclean, im burning,
im revolting and im raw and im pulsing with a disgusting sort of energy
im inky, charcoal-colored skies and the burning taste of liquor as it stings your tongue,
drip drip dripping down your throat.
im vile, im rotting,
im gore and im guts and im twitching with a fevered sort of energy
im burning, putrid-scented skies and the foul scent of bile as it rises in the back of your throat,
hic hic hiccuping into your mouth.

im exposed, im vulnerable, ive been stripped to the bone, robbed of my skin and veins and blood
im bodies rubbed raw and painful, burning flesh and decaying organisms
im the most disgustingly foul and vile and repulsive thing youll ever know,
rotting and burning and decaying and rotting rotting rotting rotten
polluted skies and
murky waters and
violent winds that tug
and rip
and pull
and shred

im bloodied knuckles and collapsed caverns
and the remains of what humanity used to be, of what humanity could have been.
im a could have been, would have been, should have been
knocked astray somewhere along the way,
no longer a shadow of the person i used to be,
but a hollow shell, a fossil, something less, something unseen and dirty,
decaying and rotting and crumbling away in your fragile, meaty, disgusting hands.

the words i say are acidic and bitter and what i write is worse
what i write is poisonous, venomous, dripping from the fangs of a python ready to strike,
deadly, untrue, misguided, selfish.
but i cant stop it, no, because im

deadly untrue misguided selfish unclean burning revolting raw disgusting inky dripping vile rotting gore guts twitching fevered putrid foul bile exposed vulnerable stripped robbed painful decaying polluted murky violent tugging ripping pulling shredding bloodied collapsed remnants could would should have been hollow fossil unseen crumbling meaty acidic bitter poisonous venomous disgusting disgusting disgusting.

i am one person
i am all of humanity
i am our planet
i am our entire solar system
i am just a spec of dust in the grand scheme of things
but i guess even stars and burning supernovas are just a spec in the grand scheme of things
in the disgusting grand scheme of things,
we're nothing, aren't we?
in the disgusting grand scheme of things
this disgusting nothing doesn't matter
because nothing does, nothing fucking does,
we're all fading, we're all decaying, we're all falling falling falling—

but i, humanity, have a question for god, for her, for the gods i believe in, for the heavens, for the divine:
if this isn't pure, if i cant swallow back holy water like its whiskey, if i cant choke on the words of that goddamned sin-ridden book, if this isn't purity, if this isn't mortality, if this isn't divinity, if this isn't holiness, if this isn't temptation, if this isn't humanity, if this isn't sin, if this isn't damnation, if this isn't nothing, if this is something, if i'm not pure, if im not pure, if im not pure, what is?

***

originally posted in ribs :-)