[thisislife]

I once had a thought wherein the slaughterer swam
And echoed hallowed gongs throughout my throat,
And wept to me: “I bear the bloody gown, my love;
I bear our bloody gown.
And if I were to melt away from these etherized corpses,
To toss a bid for salvation down the clattering throat of God,
I do not think it would shake even the smallest lot in life.
So I wear this bloody apron, love;
I wear these blood-stained gloves.”
And amidst the thrum of the sea washing across those sandy shores
The slaughterer swam along the coast, battered to the right of him,
Battered to the left of him, stormed at with undertow and cable,
Drawn back to his murmuring inevitability.
“I wear the bloody gown, my love;
I bear our bloody gown.”
I once had a thought mottled with bits
And festering on the lakeside.
Therein the slaughterer stumbled through his home,
His own hallways cluttered and dusty
And smelling of something he had removed long ago.
Fine wines and cheese and sausage strings,
The unspeakable parts wrapped for taste:
The delectable inners of beasts and fowls
Devoured with a certain relish.
The slaughterer sat stained at the table
Chewing on the edges of my mind,
Drawing the spaghetti strands as my head unravelled
And he could spell out his name in my leaks.
I once had a thought that I was being eaten,
Myself pouring out of a thousand cuts
That stung with lime like a dead man’s perfume
And all the while the slaughterer sang
With his throat echoing in the crags of his memories
And he near-drowned amidst the cacophony
Until all that I could hear in the pounding tide of my mind
Was the thought wherein the slaughterer swam
And it was strung with his voice half-chanting:
“I wear the bloody gown, my love;
I bear our bloody gown.”

Until I opened my eyes on the wedding day
I had not thought it was true.
This was not the honeymoon I wished for
In a villa by the sea.