Salvatore Difalco

Debasement

A goldfish school films my cornea with mucous.
I am swimming in my fish tank this midnight,
soaring high on a killer pink kush kite,
keeping it tight otherwise in my empty house.

What are you doing? asks no one after an hour 
lost at sea. I return dripping ribbons, hair
plastered to my skull, eyes seeing blood.
Where have you been? no fucking body wonders.

I can tell by the sound on the cell that you’ll
not come here today, as you did not come
yesterday and the day before that. Beat the eardrum
with lies, and your nose grows out of the earpiece.

Listen to music all afternoon, Goldberg variations,
grinding my piano key teeth and keeping time
with lunatic toe-tapping: look at what the agent
of love has done to this rubbery goulash dude.

What it was like to say goodbye in a crowd
of uber agro millennial savages plotting their
takeover: was it a language that you welcomed?
Finally we can unstick our velcro hair.

Cunning, in a freaky way, the goldfish tap
the aquarium glass: Feed us, depressive sailor,
feed us for this is our home through no choice
of our own, with its cheap toy castle and ignorant snails. 

Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet.