I Like Rotten Friends

Some people ferment
in the way of whiskey.
I want to say
I've had enough of that.
I'm through with rottenness.
Okay. That rottenness.
I still like some of them.
Leaf tea puddles steeping
with clouds sweeping.
My mind drinks that.
A house falling in
on itself in a field
spooked by an absence
of horses and I'm home.
Rust and verdigris.
The cheerful colors
of zombie skin.
I don't mean to sound
like a dippy Symbolist.
It's not as abstract as that.
Rotten things just speak to me.
I like to read novels
by authors with their soul
"just going over"
like an iffy egg
I force myself to eat.
Sometimes I crave frissons,
people like those Chinese
"100 year old eggs."
Real stinkers.
Hyperbolic, but they're
a funny shade of black.
Friends like that.
Contrived and destroyed.
I take a whiff of them
and feel terribly rewarded.
Terrible women, terrible men.
I know these rotten things
are only delicacies.