Live Unhated

Bottle of salty ocean

Take seventeen years worth of pirate slang

Add a dash of 826 Valencia

Read the first ten pages of Moby Dick

Purified to the max

In a deep rinse of kraken blood

And scurvy

Stunning all the onlookers for miles around 

Nearly blinded

McDonald’s thought you were hated enough

To make the Happy Meal Toy lineup

On your little windup Spanish Galleon

Adrift in 100% Apple juice

Poked until chipped

Mystery lying just beneath the surface

A solid blue mannequin instead of bones

A sculpt, not a skull

Leather beaten

Tanned

Pulled

To fit the consumer-based mold

Doesn’t matter if it hurts

Pebbles sell if you’re a smooth enough talker

Keeping track of the time and singing along to the same whistle in your hollow

Noggin

So wide and empty a tornado goes 

Silent in between your ears

No I’m not calling you stupid not by any means

I just want to know why you’re so gullible as to believe

That I was there for you

I’m not your goddamn scratching post

Let me wither in room temperature

Connect the dots to make a wish

But you’ve got a bit worse than a bald spot at this point

And the handkerchief is starting to chafe

Consciousness sliding round like a badly made

Cruise liner dining room

Free mimosas at ten

If you can stomach being around your friends for more than an hour

But I said too much

Please leave

Next?

Next to me was no one

Then you were

But I never asked to be the subject of your pity

I don’t even like it when I’m the subject of your still life.

It’s only because when I hold my breath

I look as if I’m ready

To be born amongst the sea

And forgive you politely 

Saying

“I was never much of a poet anyway”

Any further questions?

No?