Mnemovore (Form 01)

In the fort we'd stored the stash of brittle,
faded magazines we'd rescued from the trash as artifacts.
From these we learned the exaggerated anatomy
and psychology of lush creatures of mythology
as apocryphal scholars of a mystery cult, reassembling the meaning
of hairdo and ass shape and eye dark and back arch
and hip curve and thatch shade and tit size and nip point
as ciphers for decoding our stiff, unconfused erections
And like all the ignorant brutes thorugh history,
we were sure we'd discovered something

Nothing in the eye knows what's real
assumes everything it captures is obviously there
to fuck or fight or flee;
it lies as honest witness to a mind
that's laundered rough in
the potash of learning
and the acid and heat of dreams
where good and evil wrestle as a raptor and a dragon
swapping nametags after each flurry of activity

So I knew I'd need to develop a sense of smell
to tell a princess from a sea of harbingers of doom
but never got much further in my studies
than being turned inside out by a first kiss
layered over boredom in the dark
stooging all my determined theories
And for us, it' was never a matter of what fit where, but when
so that the noises in the rhythm of our play
wouldn't give the game away
and my pornosapient experiment could sustain

But it always ended, no matter what I tried
moved along to something else
most often to something else that also ended
And the mnemovore that starves in me most moments of most days
is glad to suck around the edges of the scraps that it can find
even if time has worn away the taste