I was chewing on knives (a funny poem)

See my fingers
see theyre black
see theyre burnt
(the flesh, the yellow fat rendered from the white bone)

Head is cracked: grey jelly boils
(soup of the head of a long pig)

An eye turns
(squeezed like soft fruit)

A pickled tongue
(vinegar and sweet herbs)

Bloody semen pools in the pit of the stomach
(lies like sauce on a thigh)

Ground under the feet is a block
(a grin from a second mouth)

Poet bleeds from many wounds
(poem: eaten by many mouths)
its not th collectivity

its not th collectivity
nor th grande passions
wich do that eloquent liberation mayk
but rather the quiet playss
with tongues entwind
flesh within flesh, th
odors an slick juices
still present on th skin an lips
the war in your soul

There will never be a ceasefire.
The struggle is armed.

The stutter of the gun
mocks your charming attempt

at speech.  Your words
fall like iron in the sudden

silence of the battle.
Snow in the trenches.

sunlight in columns
torture beauty from

broken metal, from
rags your comrades wear.

Beer and bad food,
warmth for your feet;

you march, you march. You
hear the drum, the staccato

command, the siren and the horn.

Rage, you rage.

The lark still sings
the drum   the drum   the drum
There’s fat whales playing off Vancouver
Driving the coast with a friend
he turns the radio on.
Im looking out at those gulf islands
Hey what you want that for eh
I say   looking out at those islands
lying like green whales.
And now in Ontario, driving the highway alone,
snow clouds above my head like fat whale bellies,
I turn the radio on.
wing wing

i quiver like gut
im lost in a foul confusing way

yessir im cornered alright!

o i sing like string
by giant fingers plucked
and o im fearful, floating like feathers

its like — yes! —
a raw Chicken Wing!
yellow fat under white skin, th bone twists

o i sing like string

© Riley Tench, 2015