she was tripping into
the middle of st. peter's pedestal
and the golden gates designed by twelve monks
from zanzibar
to vomit the three doses of saliva
mixed with salt-free margaritas
because she's a hardcore drinker you see,
and can't stand to have the salt separate her
from her addiction.

when she looked up towards that grinning
beard of a man,
honest: he was two-thirds beard, one-sixth
man, and a final sixth of angelic robe,
she asked if he was the taxi driver.

"no," he grinned,
and she suddenly felt at least
ninety-three percent better,
if not for that nagging pit in her stomach,
which she constantly assumed was
social awkwardness mixed with guilty
feelings of that first time with that boy
who said he loved her, but couldn't keep
a straight face while he slipped inside her pants.
However, this time that pit
was actually trying to scream
"run the other way you twit, away from that
man who makes you feel like a real person,
away from the warm afterglow of
shiny gold, and the voices whispering
to her from the other side that
it was okay to follow into the haze
of somewhere no longer located
west of the mississippi"
(She had never
been further east of LA than Vegas
for a few one night stands with
Prozac and tequila)

she tried running,
but it's awfully hard to run on clouds in stilettos.

but as the man pulled her into the brightest corner
of West Hollywood, told her to smile with
the most reassuring voice she had heard since,
well,
the last man to get her drugged up and into his apartment,
she thought to herself,

"maybe this won't be so bad. this time."

03/09/2008

Author's Note: i just wanted to thank tracey paradiso, who a long time ago on the poem "whimsical girl" wanted an expansion of the poem. While this isn't necessarily an expansion of that same poem, consider it a campy sequel.

Posted on 03/09/2008
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