help! i’m hyperfixating on my keyboard and my mouth tastes too much like my tongue

only one thing in this poem is a lie i’ve done it all i swear i’ve done it all
with pride like licking the back inside window of my friends’ brand new

red car no i don’t know the names of cars i’d rather know the names of cows
and cows tend to taste better but only when they are dead and i have indeed

touched the dead, my grandfather’s hand in the casket during my first viewing
where grandma said “well, they did his hair wrong, but he looks nice” and his

hand decorated with the buddhist prayer beads felt like it was structured with wire
and my hair was in my mouth and i wanted it so much to taste like a live

wire to burn my taste buds into caring even though that is not their purpose

***

i want to know when you read keyboard whether you thought of typing or
beethoven, if you thought of your pinky finger striking the backspace or

b flat being flat on your back on your fake wood floor with a thin blue key
board on your belly and it sounds like a tooth sinking into taffy and getting stuck

every time you hit the e eeeeeeeeeee but it feels good so you go again again again
like when i kept stuffing my face with taffy on the coast and i used two fingers

on my right hand to pry them off my teeth and of course it was in public mom

***

i also want to know how much you appreciate your tongue not the buds
the actual pink muscle and its propensity to get stuck on a 100% strawberry

fruit juice popsicle just out of the wrapper and that little layer gets peeled
off but it's so so good so you lick away until the popsicle stick draws a thread

of blood and you stare at yourself in the mirror tongue hanging out with blood
dripping down and try to say in the clearest voice possible this is what it feels like

to be a vampire and i need to know if all blood not dead cow blood tastes just the same

***

i want to know how often you are disappointed in your own body when your eyes
wander into an optical illusion without knowing its an optical illusion and wander

out very crossed and huffy puffy or like how sometimes my feet smell like fritos
but they most certainly do not taste like pre-expiration date fritos or even any

sort of chip at all and how your hair can’t actually be wire and how your tongue
can cosplay like a slug for halloween but never actually have the antennae or mucus

or shrivel in the sun, spasm under salt so much it dies and now you can’t even taste death

***

or how we are not covered in scales or feathers or the other type of scales but we can
feel all of that usually without the animal’s permission but i remember when someone

took my phone without my permission and the first time it happened i cried on the city
bus and the second time i bit my friend on his arm which was also not with his permission

but there was no mark like his tattoo and we continued to drive around with my head stuck
outside the passenger window kind of like a dog but with less drool less bark more bite

bite bite bite without me tasting or feeling or using my tongue there is no tongue

***

are you still with me have you tasted your tongue and used it to lick a window or even
a glass coaster or a sticky jelly window cling that should be illegal if they are not flavored

and have you thanked me for that yet because i have not said you’re welcome or are you still
at the supermarket looking at all the dead cows that no longer look like cows or the cow

juice that came from cows without their permission or are you kneeling in your garden
crying because your hands are covered in dirt and you haven’t found any earthworms yet

and let me just say that live and even washed off they do not taste particularly delightful