I kind of feel like a field of ten thousand oranges,
like a universe made up entirely of suns,
like some sort of cosmic relief to be freed from subterranean dirt,
like I’ve worked my way through codependent alcohol-induced relationships
and deciphered every single Fall Out Boy lyric.
I kind of feel like God,
except I’m buying Glide floss at the grocery store
and everyone around me is God too.
I kind of feel like the flower section at King Soopers.
I feel like the succulent on clearance at King Soopers
but then I purchase myself and water myself back to health.
The sky is a Charles Mingus song,
my eyes are an audience drunk on sound.
I’m chewing on the clouds like white taffy.
I’m mourning ten years of residual teenaged angst
but teenaged angst isn’t dead,
it’s just hiding under ground
punching the lid of its coffin until it can break through
and avenge the man that massacred my wedding party.
I kind of feel like love.
Like I’ve arrived in a nice suit at a wedding.
Like the king of the dance floor, drowning in waves of hands held high.
Like my twenties largely prepared me through the trial and error of shit mistakes
to enter my thirties entirely renewed and ablaze
and ready to make all sorts of new and interesting mistakes.
My bones are bionic.
The marrow is whiskey.
I am whiskey now, I don’t need to drink to get there.
I’ve aged in barrels.
My beard sleeps soundly against the walls of my face.
If I had ten thousand blenders I’d turn them all on to high.
I am a giant monster that could attack the city but instead
I’m opting to dig deep in the dirt and plant large gardens of flowers.
I am realized chaos,
I am a cat thrown into the sky
and landing in downward dog.
My tongue spits om after om
as I regenerate my bones.
I am sailing on an ocean of great intentions
and I spent a quiet night with Hemingway
taught how to punch caustic sharks in their stupid faces.
Neruda has taught me that revolution and love
are one and the same.
Warsan taught me that our pain is our story
and it can be behind us,
like a great thick wind pushing us into new pain.
I am naked and painting myself to blend in with the grass.
I am green and inseparable from everything,
except I’m acutely aware I’m 30.
I’m acutely aware of the position I’ve established on my doomsday clock.
I am the clock hands of Doctor Manhattan in the mouth,
along the sides, in the cunt,
floating like oceans across the breasts of a lover.
I am meditating on Mars about my goddess of war,
and how she has awakened inside of me the armistice of my arms,
now outstretched into great giant fields of oranges,
where I reach out,
and grab them,
and peel the skin,
and I try to pull the pieces out neatly,
but the orange says no,
the orange says,
enough already,
dig your face deep into me and eat me rabidly.
BRICE MAIURRO 