I’m stuck in here, this kitchen

with modern equipment, this electrical appliance

peeling clauses, cutting 

verbs, articles and nouns, mixing 

with adjectives and adverbs, wrapping

in tinfoil.

Checking my private recipe: Codeine, Klonopin, Psilocybin…

my face glittering, my eyes shivering, my mind

modifying the present, this present

has been the future and will be the past…

Unwrapping the tinfoil, Oops, the intonation of a sentence 

is overcooked; the content of a sentence is 

meaningless, the fluency of a sentence 

is stuck in here, in my tongue: rootless, useless;

and still I cook, cook, cook my words

to articulate this unpresentable eloquence.

I know the word is tasteless, but sometimes I take some Xanax 

so I overdo a ‘s’, so I become a smith, 

the word a malleable substance, hammering 

out a present progressive tense.

How’s the taste? You ask me. 

I spit the word out: 

Salty.