They taste different
Flavors of boys
Flavors of men-to-be
Taste of tingling batteries,
sticky lollipop sweet,
melted mint,
heated breath,
yummy testosterone
Why am I still chewing this?
Milky way stars filling my mouth,
like a handful of cotton balls.
Big, vast overwhelming God-ideas
Notebook paper, thin and ephemeral,
melts around my shrink-wrapped tongue,
with inky smeared self-promises.
Powdery laundry freshness,
tickling the air down my throat.
Global cloud blue,
like blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers.
Words and words and words,
Phone calls of words,
Garbled questions
Fast-paced naïve hope,
like wispy cotton candy
dissolving after saliva contact.
Playful entertainment,
Wasted entertainment,
like the regret of eating a
mountainous pile of salty chips
with plastic orange cheese.
Stone bricks, mortared to keep safe,
Fearful half-truths—
the slime of disappointment,
like the acid of soured grapefruit
slithers down my esophagus.
Marbled gumballs crammed in my mouth
No room to chew
So
One
By
One
I spit them out.
The color is faded,
sticky white planets
rolling listlessly, look,
on the ground.
That is their collective taste,
like fuzzy sugar:
too sweet to last
more than 30 seconds.
Only a taste,
never a savor.
