How to Emotionally Prepare for the Apocalypse
by Kim Vodicka
Let me bust your bubble gently.
I sacrificed a dozen bloody, smiling roses
on a wedding dress
the night you told a digital rogues gallery
you were in love with me.
I was the first and last to know.
My participation mattered little,
I suspect,
because my reciprocation mattered
much.
You were afraid I’d say no,
don’t give me any
of your sunshine.
When you told the cancellation station
you were in love with me,
I felt a resentful warmth.
I’d rather not be an accessory
to a performance art project.
Even clean laundry, aired,
is a dirty gesture.
I’d rather play first fiddler
on the roof of your mouth.
I bought a twelve-pack of mermaids,
but you were way ahead of me.
You woke up with a new moonover
next to a mermaid
and drank it
on account of being thirsty,
which is reasonable.
But really it’s because drinking
a mermaid feels almost like
kissing me.
I wanted to know what it feels like
to kiss me,
so I bought a twelve-pack of mermaids
and spent the whole night kissing
myself.
I drank you under
the picnic blanket.
If you really know what you’re talking about
when you talk about being in love with me,
I’d like to have some say
on the matter.
I don’t want your public consumption
face.
I don’t want what’s fit for public
display.
I want the demons you invite
through the back.
I want you
in all your living death wish
glory,
sleeping under eighteen-wheelers
and whatnot.
I want you at your least.
I want you at your least
solipsistic.
If I can’t have you,
I’ll at least take you
tonight.
I’ll buy you mermaids
until you text me in tongues.
If I can’t take you for who you are,
I’ll take you
for who you appear to be.
I could come up with a master list of reasons
why this love will never flower,
and I already have,
but I’d rather against-my-will it
into existence.
Come take a tumble
in the weaker parts
of my garden.
Come chug-a-lug
that giggle water,
smiling blood
of Christ.
I’ll wash your feet
if you wash mine.
Let’s bless each other’s hearts
so hard
our souls will be forever
saved.
The end of the world is on its way,
you know.
That doom-idealism
combination.
There’s really nothing more empowering
than taking the apocalypse
into your own hands
and cradling it
like a crack baby.
All you really have to do
to be the last great love of my life
is take the hand and foot approach.
Finagle a rose into my hand,
put my feet in your mouth,
finesse these digits,
take your seat at the foot.
I won’t settle for anything less
than the best,
if I am to feed and feed you
my milk parts.
All you really have to do
to be the last great love of my life
is become a doctor of roseicology.
I refuse to research my own rose.
You’re negatively capable,
in the way that biblical disaster
personalities
are negatively capable.
It’s hard to be in love
with me,
all tinfoil on the outside
and heartstrong.
All tinfoil on the inside
and good at tending
cut flowers
and even better at killing
perfectly grounded
ones.
But a girl can still dream
in golden blonde
and yellow gold,
and I’m just a girl,
you know.
I’m just a girl
you barely know.
Ready to die
any day, cry
any time.
Ready to smoke any given love rock
handed to me
in whatever format.
Ready for the sky to open fire.
And the weather is already starting
to change.
One can only wuther in one’s depths
and anticipate revelations
for so long before becoming
fully domesticated.
I baked a pie or four
upon hearing the news about the comet
because I’m an anti-heroine
and multitudinous.
Ready for my wife audition
and the subsequent breeding pageant
in spite of certain disappointment
and/or death.
Just for the sake of seeing
where this controlled emotional experiment
might go,
for the sake of screaming
my piece.
Oh, the things we do
between groans.
I like to imagine a life between groans
with you.
I’m already making you the center
of my paranoiac fantasies.
You’re the emerging star
of my dream journal,
the one I update nightly,
almost nightly.
You told a theater of cruelty
you were in love with me
while I was in mid-Husband Crusade,
self-medicating with marriage profiling,
on a Stepford binge.
I’m not sure what that says about me,
but I sure hope
it’s a real heart-dropper,
enough to sink you to the bottom
of the ocean
where all of the best catches live.
Let me bust your bubble gently.
You and your miss parade.
Love is inherently apocalyptic,
but there’s no greater comfort
than doomsday.
The softer side of me agrees.
The harder side of me agrees, too.
The other side, with the greener grass, agrees.
The poison ivy marriage bed does, too,
as does the jewel weed.
The cure for what ails you
grows right beside
the disease.
Pennywife me
before the end times
beats you to it.
I’ll Pennywise you
up.
Give me just a little
of your sunshine
before there’s no sunshine left
at all.
I’m ready-not-ready
to melt into a radioactive
puddle.
You’ll make meme of me
yet,
but make a me of me
first.
I mean, I don’t not
want it.
About the Author:
Kim Vodicka is a poet, nihilist and spokesbitch of a degeneration. See more at kimvodicka.com.
