—AND THIS IS WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID

 

 

Red Period

 

 

The sky has a sour belly she needs to expunge, needle marks running down her scrawny arms, a scowl in her breath

The moon’s been dead for months now, throat slit by a Messiah, her kindling-sized bones stashed under some landlord’s gummy mouth guard 

There are options, but still, I could swallow all the sand or piss in Marina Del Ray, and nothing would change

Children would still go missing, get bitten and beaten

Because cruelty begins at the roots, hidden like incestuous sheets, stained with hieroglyphic hysterics and pleas for help 

Everyone knows that veracity is as two-faced as the moon before its been murdered, as slippery as a carpet made from steaming intestines

Me, I’ve been trying on new stripes for my skin, watching the scarlet pucker and bubble up over each jagged slit

I call it my Red Period and simply sigh humbly at the cracked stratosphere

You hurt yourself if the bridges don’t collapse, and the rigs on the freeway veer, last second, lickety-split, and won’t mow you into a splat, or like if you leap off the Chrysler and some cocky, Dudley Do-Right fireman catches you when what you want is to wear an asphalt mask, so many fragments bit into your body that the mortician throws up his gloves

It’s a record player with a horsehair needle, like the one my brother lifted the week grandmother’s car got crushed by a yawning locomotive 

It’s also true that I’ve never seen a twilight so untrustworthy, counting her pilfered loot, her PDA on grand display, fangs fronted, lust like a burden that can’t be curbed, a deluge about to fall and drown us all, her laughing deliriously as we puke up cats and dogs, the very things that were meant to save us, or bring us joy, but never did