"drinking silver"

"drinking silver"
after heavy irish by jake kilroy.

pint after pint,
grin after grin,
comes the soft taste of silver.
your heart becomes a statue
for your other organs to worship,
as your stomach becomes a graveyard
and your liver becomes a foamy ocean.
the silver comes through your body like a storm,
loud and beautiful;
like something you saw on a porch in texas,
when you were shirtless and cackling,
bareboned in words and quiet in speech.
the lightning came at the trees,
the thunder came at your bedroom,
and everything felt like loud music.
you were naked then,
and you're naked now,
but there's something different about the glow.
the silver drains the color of your insides,
and swirls it around to grow;
so that the pigments of your skin
are like christmas lights.
and the silver tastes like magic.
it tastes like card tricks and top hats.
it tastes like first loves and lovers' firsts.
it tastes like goddamn memories.
so it tastes like silver,
like the stale taste of gold.