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Synchronous Mastication I, II, III, IV, V
I. Condemned Degrees
I turn the steering wheel in condemned degrees.
The gas pedal pushes itself up, grows into
a serpent, placing its cold scales around
my legs, and then calcifying. My seat shakes
as the sky flickers like an aged light bulb
and turns off. The dark throws me into
a paranoia for narcosis until I notice spotlights
on a stage. In front of me sits a stiff man.
His neck spasms, exposes a closed slit.
On stage, a character in a sun costume floats
from left to right. A missile sits upright,
reads: Novelty Anesthetic 37 down the middle.
Another character walks over and bangs it
with a hammer simultaneously to blinking
LED signs that read: Laugh. I dismiss it.
The stiff man chuckles as his neck opens,
protrudes a cornea that faces me. His shoulder
grows a tumor that bites out of his shirt, crawls
with millipede legs down the seat, to the floor,
and to my braced legs, digs itself into my thigh.
I am inclined to chuckle in synchrony with him.
II. Parallel Mutation
The sidewalk nears its abrupt end, and like
a caged lemur, I pace along its last square
baffled, until the temptation to step forth
strikes unbearable. But then, the surface
salivates, warps, and regresses into its pre-
natal goop. It gorges upon my ankles, then
hardens. It deroots, then thwomps¹ forth
upon an unopened coffer. Its debris blows
into a twister, peeling the canvas from a bill-
board. Like a body bag, it wraps around.
In hopes of breaking free, I convulse until
being discarded like a sour oyster. A three-
inch thick carpet breaks the fall, and the bag
inflates into a king size bed. The comforter,
plush and red, rasps like a kinking tin sheet.
With palm to ear, I elbow my way up into
a scamper, but the shuffling only intensifies
into the next room. There, a television airs
me as if the screen were a mirror. Into this,
I break a big smile. The noise polution halts.
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¹Thwomp -- a large, heavy stone block with an angry-
looking face. It hovers in the air, waiting for someone
to get too close, and then it falls and crushes him. It is
a is a creature found in many video games from the
Super Mario Bros. series, usually found guarding castles.
(Wikipedia).
III. Vector Blossom
A spasm compiles on the crease of my elbow
and expands like a puddle of vibrating slime
kicking underneath an inelastic skin; one area
tears open, extrudes an eel's head. I grapple
its snout shut while tugging ferociously.
Finally, the creature sling-shots to the floor,
screeching/slapping its torso (my former
bicept) uncontrollably. I gleefully sprint, limp-
armed, toward a sink to fill a bucket for him,
but when he gets submerged, the disorientation
continues. I dip my twitching hand to pet him
but his fangs get embedded into my fingers,
dying the water more red than formerly.
He is hungry. At the window, I notice a man
turning his wheels in condemned degrees.
IV. Paraylsis
The mailbox salivates and expels a cold tentacle
at Ezra. Like a frog's tongue, it retracts her fore-
arm 'nto its mouth. A cassette crawls 'nto her palm.
"Good day!" yells a neighbor on all fours, panting
doglike, and approaching cheerfully. A cassette slot
opens under his chin, so he gets on twos to beg.
Upon insertion, the neighbor sings Sinatra: "when
the moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie,
that's a mole-a," then a gloppy mole squirms out
from his mouth followed by a tick-emitting shower
faucet. At once, she pulls the shower certain aside.
The sink drain whips its tongue out as she rips her
skin from teething at pests. Her neck grows limp,
sending her forehead t'ward a mirror that cracks
'nto spiderweb patterns. Queen Widow crawls 'nto
her nostril and implants a sedative-puffing cannula.
V. Cryptic Rebellion
The sofa room emits laughter-pollution but halts,
and then resumes elsewhere, past a rising drape.
Through the window, a blinding spotlight swarms,
casting an amplified gargoyle-shadow (apparently
invisible to the wide-eyed arena of beings before
me). In synchrony, their tongues dip left and right,
resonating subtle tremors of slosh for me to mimic.
And I mimic. In ascendance, a scratching forms
until crumbs begin leaking from the ceiling. A dusty
head of an asp protrudes and slowly wriggles close
but then droops. Like a pulley, I wrench its scaly
skin to release, out there, the shower of juice-
boxes-on-a-string (one per seat). They salivate.
In synchrony, the stiff necks stretch toward bent
straws. They slurp successively until their lungs
infiltrate with the remaining air. At exhalation, their
limbs begin paralysis outside in. Thereupon, I bust
the glass, charge outside, and drive a flag into one
of the hostages. I now declare this domain mine!
