Chatroulette

Lyrics

To see, to come, I brought myself online. O dirty church. O two-way periscope, refectory for Earth's most skin-starved cocks. O hungry sons of helicopter palms in hopeful carousel. O gatling spray of skin that charges forth from dim-lit shorts when I wave back, nod, yes, I'm here, I'm real, and shape myself a woman's shape, a girl's live-action hologram projected on their basement brains. My foul amygdala Prince Thirstings, desperate congregations, pink or blue-brown mammals begging for my face. Outside the frame, my eight eyes narrow. Yes. I nod. Amen. I am your filthy god. : : : : I nod. Amen. I am your filthy god, your predator-elect. I'll wrap your mouths in silken Os around my phantom thumb. Now drink. I'll scrape the lonely from your teeth, defuse the ticking marrow in your pit, that clotted place you call a heart. I'll flash a blood-sloshed smile and whisper, do you want to marry it? To take me as your law? I'll make you liquid men. I'll watch you eat my image, icon, rumor of a god who wants you back. Who wants to watch you dance your crooked dance, your sad attempts at flight. But stay down, insect, stay. Just send them here, your salt-licked gifts, to prove you know I'm real. : : : : These salt-logged gifts, they promise me I'm real. My body is its image, here. My image, just an always-dying thing, asking its own disgusting question. Yes, I do have bones. I gag on water. Yes, my blood eats air and makes a mess beneath my skin. And what do I consume? Whatever keeps me flesh. Tonight: a tide of faceless supplicants who call me by the name my mother made with mud and marrow, veins, vermillion, silk; they call me baby. Call me vertebrate. They christen me with tongues against the glass. I drink and drink their looking, til I'm soaked. I drink and drown in want. I drink, and choke. : : : : I drink and drown in want. I drink. I choke just like a girl, exactly like a girl who's come to rot, to retch. To cough it up. To drool mascara down her shaking chin. I am the kind of girl who looks for men to wipe away her face. I am the kind of girl to peel her skin and show the work of worms below. The kind to open up, I guess, in public, in the stocks – that's me, oh god. A trough for ants. A dirty plate. A sour, yellow streak behind the fridge. Chicken skin distending. Sweat spots. Milk. I wanted nothing. Please, I didn't mean to end this way – a smear of gut and shell. : : : : To end this way, a smear of gut and shell against the bedroom wall, crushed by a thumb belonging to a man, a swatting fan in heat? Don't worry. That's not how I go. Look. Even when I wanted it, I didn't always. Couldn't always bring myself to crack the shell, suck out the pearly meat, tie up what's left and feed it to my brood. Not skin, not god, not bones, my own, or theirs. It was the web I wanted all along: A face to spin from air with spit and hands. A sticky picture luring meals to leave untouched. To be a girl untouched, alive, who sees, and comes. Who brings herself online.