BUBBLEGUM'S FUNERAL

Bubblegum's funeral:

To head off the dry-out.

Eight every hour.

Overdose well.

Blisters spawning insects.

Eating wounds.

Further infections.

Other insects.

Deeper wounds.

Calligraphic scars on calligraphic scars.

Bubblegum's last mistake was unearthing a carpet in a junk shop. S/He was looking for books, but s/he found a carpet instead. S/He wanted a manual to live by, or to cure certain transgressive elements, or to at least distract the skin from certain transgressive elements, but s/he got a carpet instead. S/He dragged the carpet onto the 266 bus, ignoring complaints, along damp alleyways, rolled out under feet with a cup of tea, and then s/he began to itch, or s/he started to itch, or s/he just itched, and then s/he scratched that itch <Feel it? Now? Somewhere?>.

(((((((((Or maybe s/he was sooooo tired s/he just passed out, lounge chair lazy, and it started with a sneeze in the morning. Bloody tissue. Black milk cereal. Legs lowered to cut off circulation <Remember the way we used to dance when Bubblegum wasn't around?>. Time lapse dreams running backwards. Empty limbs/genitals removed. Psychiatric assessment. The underlying keyhole smaller than the cover. Located in the lining of the walls we travel through))))))))).

Bubblegum turns pale and looks away from the microscope before returning to enlarge the contrast until it becomes fiction. The slice almost gone. Marbled limestone housing the image of our own fossils. S/He traces the sediment layers like s/he is a passenger in a body found floating in an algal colony on a tropical sea. The questions s/he asks the body seem redundant and the answers are decay. On the next slide, visible in the wall right from the beginning but cut off at an angle <Common death scene?>, an escalator leading down to a train station platform disappears into a plague of bright light.