RC Weslowski

What is this dead tongue
On the floor
This jaw hearse
This diesel ventriloquist
This self-immolating inhaler
This Helen Keller phone sex
This Dillinger wind crime
This suffocated witness
This muted cadaver
This Salvador Dalmation
This censored auctioneer
This colonized prayer
This murdered fireside chat
Roosevelt in the wilderness
Walden Pond scum
This gentrified tower of scrabble
This ball gagged jury
Of our fears
This over extended self-aware list of puns

What is this dead tongue
On the floor
Why won’t it let me
Buy it dinner
Why won’t it let me
Take it shopping
Buy it some self-help books
And a slip n slide
Or take it for a hike in the forest
A breath of fresh air
Might do it some good
But it’s a tongue
A dead tongue on the floor
It’s not even a slug
That might work up the courage
To slither into the world
It won’t move and
Come out of the darkness
It’s Marlon Brando in the jungle
Heavy as the inside of a confessional

It looks like Andre the Giant
Trapped inside of a Beatle
John Lennon not the automobile
But I can see how you might
Mix them up

They were both big in Germany
After the war, they were both
Decommissioned when he wrestled
At Madison Square Gardens

No one has anything bad to say
About Andre the Giant unlike John Lennon
Who was an asshole but few are
Willing to say it because he wrote songs
That frightened Richard Nixon and
Inspire Stephen Harper

What is this dead tongue
On the floor what if we
Were to ask it what
Does it want
It might answer I can’t answer
Because I’m dead don’t be so
Superstitious are you bored
With your Ouija board
But it might answer I’ll answer you
Anyway, I’m not in control
Of this narrative and it might say

Gut me
Let the black magic out
Take a scythe and cut me open
There is too much
Unspoken horror between us
Everything left behind
On the moon
It’s the silence that killed me
I’m tired of the memories
Of being haunted by echoes
I want to let everything go