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.
