CHOKING ON THE BREATH OF LIFE

IAN MARTIN

Eating pogos is just practice for sucking dick. chlorine echos linger at the pool bar. you in your swim shorts mixing condiments on a paper plate to prove your influence. the girth of a battered hot dog, the feeling of being completely filled before the chew, swallow, dissolution. food stops being real when you're digesting it. it's gone, it's not about your pleasure anymore. so you take another bite, a huge one, small bites don't fill you. another bite, you try to hold it there forever, but forever is a long time so you swallow. the pogo’s gone quick and you're empty. hollow shouts gather in grey rafters, point fingers at you, conspire. back in the pool you think about drowning, and wouldn't that fill you completely, and wouldn't that taste nice, like swimming lessons, like pogos, and why can't you be happy all the time, forever, the taste and fullness swelling inside you with no end. blue, black, white swirl together in your brain, tiles click-clack together in the tornado. in the chaos a whirlpool jet snipes you in the head. a part of you died in this pool. a part of you that couldn't live without pogos. a part that preferred the dank recesses of the deep end, the endless night-time of the waterslide. you didn't pass your swimming class because you were too scared of that hole, the wide gargling throat you’d slip into and never leave. the next year you slid down the slide no problem and it was so fun you kept sliding down over and over and never wanted to stop. but you had to go home, you had to stop eating pogos, you had to stop swimming and grow up and you're still scared of mouths, empty mouths, and if you ever try to fill one, even once, you can't leave, because you are the pogo, and you can’t let the flavour stop.

IAN MARTIN is dying. Get the juicy uncensored truth at WWW.IAN-MARTIN.NET
back