Mary Taste So Dirty By Robin Dunn

It does taste dirty — I’ll leave it at that. But leaving it — what does that really mean?

Do we really ever stop coming back to the taste of the sun, my sun worshippers, the taste, like a dirty woman, our city Mary, Mary, Mary taste so dirty.

Mary taste so dirty was my love, in the dark, when I built the city we remember now . . .

But I don’t want to tell you about that, I want to tell you about the temple we built — this was 11,000 years ago you understand, Mary taste so dirty and me would pour water into the bowl.

Pour my water into the bowl.

Pour my water into the bowl.

Take me and take you, to now, like yesterday —

Mary taste so dirty lives forever, not like me, I’ll die soon compared to her.

Of course we know Mary Los Angeles will kill us, that’s why we come, for the death we are owed.

You owe me death and I demand it justly.

“I’ve got five bucks says you’re a wash-up,” she says.

“Keep gambling,” I tell her.

“When are you going to fuck me?” she says.

 

Fuck me, Los Angeles.

Fuck me again so dirty

These stolen waters sweeter than symphonies.

 

“It’s not like that Robin,” she says.

What’s it like then?

“You’re fetishizing it, like you fetishize my body.”

But you are a fetish, the original Venus de Milo, sedentary and undying, written over the skies.

“You think you know but you don’t,” she says. “I’m still looking. Still looking so long, and the dirt in the water is message in the dark on the radio from the lips of the Wolfman, without noise there is no signal and I must recite my name, at least long enough, until someone listens —

“Let me tell you,” I say. “It’s not what you think.”

You have so much power but you don’t know how to use it. You don’t know what you want.

How much dirt do you want? Drink it with me.

© 2015 Robin Wyatt Dunn

Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming during the Carter Administration. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the intelligentsia. He holds three degrees, drinks coffee (lattes included), and thinks that being intelligent is a good thing and talking about ideas worthwhile. He is the kind of pinko egghead Joseph McCarthy wanted to flay alive and burn at the stake on the White House lawn. He knows that the McCarthys and the Pol Pots and the George W. Bushes of the world are always and forever eager and ready to slit his throat and dump him in a mass grave. This is why he has a wicked sense of humor.

Written and performed live at Roar Shack LA, 2/8/15

Comments are closed.