Willie SMITH

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SHINE TOOK
              —For Satan

Happy as an apple fat on a tree,
laughing so soundlessly
as to split both sides of misery,
my leer drips poison.
One boy's meat is another girl's toy.
Scarlet suffuses my cheek.

Happy as an adam's-apple a-hum
in the midst of a hymn,
my heart hides a tang
sparkly as a fuse.
Won't you pluck, bite
and swallow my flesh,
that you too might feel,

in the apple of my eye,
this confused luster?

REQUIEM FOR A TOOTH

One less to chew, one less in which to grow long, one less to lie through; can't for spit whistle.
To insure identification of the corpse, it was vital to keep you under professional care. You exhibited this personality called smile, apparently descended from the snarl, fear and aggression the mother of us all.
In dreams you leaped like Pepsi cans from a speeding Cadillac littering with aluminum the Galaxy.
Had you owned your own wheels—would've been a Nash. So you could drive around with the top down showing off the pearly whites. Hit the horn.
Pull into McDonald's with a screech to set the choppers on edge. But you never owned beans—stony, penniless, broke to the bone. Now outside the mouth-nothing but a lump of carbonate; just another busted seashell. Flip you in the trash. Sink onto the pillow. Eye the ceiling, asking the vacancy in the hotel of myself: well, exactly what do I own?

 

GOURMET BRAIN

The waiter—a hawk faced beanpole with brilliantined hair, corkscrew eyes, Salvador Dalํ moustache—wheeled up, strapped to a sort of highchair, the monkey. An emaciated squirrel in the prime of his farmed existence. I examined the glazed eyes of the semi-comatose delicacy. The hollow cheeks. The lips retracted to reveal ground-down teeth. The chewed nails. The scrawny limbs, wasted chest, sunken gut. An adolescent obsessed with paranoia. A being fresh-squeezed by life's lemons. Cramped thoughts of thought trapped in a thoughtless cage. I nodded approval. The contents promised a delectably sour, saliva-provoking adventure. The waiter popped off the precut skullcap. I leaned over. Surveyed the pulsing thinker. Aimed at the shiny prefrontal my runcible spoon.

The waiter's lip curled. Above the waxed moustache the beak of a nose wrinkled. His neck arched. He waved me back—as if batting at a gnat. I squeaked around on the vinyl bench. Repositioned spoon on black crepe napkin. Rolled eyes at domed ceiling of inner sanctum; windowless cubbyhole where were seated—one at a time—patrons desiring the island specialty. OK—only my fifth brain, this but my first week of exile. Never investigated this particular dive. I'm no expert. Go with the flow. Follow orders. When in Rome roam with the Romans. Although it's my dough, and I'm the one who ordered. Whatever—old Tightface sure not angling for a tip. He drew from a lapel pocket his own utensil—tiny, bright; seemed for all the world a sterling coke spoon. Dipped it in a mother-of-pearl snuffbox fished into his other palm. Sprinkled sparkly powder over the exposed organ. Ah, I thought, a pinch of toot to numb the wretch. A humane touch. But the brain, I corrected myself, has no feeling, no sensitivity to pain. Although it contains all feeling, all pain—or so science would have us think. So perhaps it's to craze—as the customer dives in—the animal's pleasure center—further to spice the treat with a last-instant neurotransmitter tsunami. He tucked both implement and condiment back on his person. The snuffbox in a trouser pocket chinked against keys and coin. In lieu of bon appetit he snorted a sneer lifting one tendril of his lip hair, like a black widow testing a strand some hapless fly tripped. He then vamoosed—doubtless intent on sucking out his own lunch; perhaps the ichor of some chocolate mousse abortion. In the dankness lingered burnt transformer stink. Precisely the aftershave to expect in this backwater cosmopolis. I ditched the miff. Hunger shouldered aside pride. I leaned forward. Dug the spoon into where I spotted on the lobe an unusually thick accretion of scrumptious cortex. Sawteeth ruptured vessels. Divided tissue. Excised the morsel. But stayed a moment gustatory ecstasy. Endeavored, on second thought, first to feed curiosity. 


Raised the loaded spoon to my eye. In the candlelight, scrutinized the scattering of no, not cocaine, not MSG, not salt (all which readily dissolve). But itsy crystals intact atop the gobbet. I gazed abstractedly at glittering scarlets, blues, topazes, azures. Rainbows tiny as mosquito buzzes—spectral spectra sensing a sixth. Were these? Yes—the jagged pieces absent from the puzzle of each cerebrum served unseasoned in those previous cupola-ed cubbyholes—none quite so cobwebbed, obscure, hostile. I winced. Slipped into my mouth the wobbly spoonful. Nibbled at length the jelly suggestive of green blackberry mingled with oak smoke; vaguely decayed oyster overtone. Zingy crunches finished. A pins-and-needles acerbity spurted into stings. Yes—silica. Finely ground glass. Meant to bleed both sides. An artistic aping of the acme of higher intelligence: to perceive—captured through transparent ache-rapture. I swallowed, while into place fell divinely painful release from banishment. Then out of meditation I snapped—a knife unsheathed—as the spoon—poised for the next scoop—reflected obsessively the view from below.