Spoken Word.

Break me open with your words
Capture the flame in your mouth
Spit it out like a dragon
Cremate me

Burn me with your verse so I can
squish the word on your tongue
Before you lick me with it

I want to be licked

Like a child’s first carnival ride
Spinning like tires on dark concrete

It’s summer in the city in February
Drum beats bass life around the park and I want you
to whisper what this means
Always lost in this place between cerebellum and saliva
Shape it for me.

Craft the warm air and cigarette ash and perceived timelessness
Of this afternoon
Into tangible
Let it well up in my throat so I will remember to
choke on this memory later.

I need your dragon flames and carnival rides
Your cracked lenses and chipped voice
Inching on taste buds
Like hips creeping up to drum beats
I need something that tastes more alive for a change.

So break me
Don’t be afraid of what might thump from your chest
I’ve swum with mermaids in tar lagoons and
picked saccharin from the teeth of small children
Don’t let the prison of spit be your excuse

Don’t excuse the candidness of voice with apology
Set it free
Bring us closer to understanding
with iron cast words
and apologies

Cremate me
Beat me like drums

Give me a reason to want
To return to dust.