baby, i know places we won't be found. the old oak growing upside-down in the backyard. the lake of human hair three miles west. canada

our song is the way you laugh, exposing row after row of venomous incisors

she's not a saint, and she's not what you think. she's an actress, whoa -- she's a vessel for forty-six gods whose names taste like cold silver

she wears high heels; all my feet are bare. she's cheer captain, and i live deep under the bleachers, watching, my mandibles gently clicking

i'm really gonna miss you picking fights, and me falling for it, disemboweling you, and stringing your intestines from the ceiling fan

got a long list of ex-lovers; they yearn to tell you i'm insane. unfortunately, none of them have mouths anymore

cause like, we hadn't seen each other in a month when you said you needed space. as per your request, i sent you to a distant nebula to rot.

i could show you incredible things: stolen kisses, pretty lies, the flimsy gauze which staunches the bleeding wound in the sky

don't you worry your pretty little mind. people throw rocks at things that shine. and pitchforks at things that crouch atop their roofs

now i'm lying on the cold hard ground. now i'm melting through it. now i'm assimilating into the magma below. trouble, trouble, trouble.

romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone. i'll be waiting. always waiting. i have poisoned and cocooned my fellow capulets to be safe

i'm not a princess. this ain't a fairytale. i'm not molting. those ain't scales hidden beneath. i swear

cause baby, i could build a castle out of all the bricks they threw at me. i could also absorb the bricks into my gelatinous skin as armor

never thought we'd have a last kiss. never imagined we'd end like this, cornered and quivering before these immense, slavering jaws

someday i'll be living in a big old city, feasting on the engorged and ancient creatures in the sewers, and all you're ever gonna be is mean

"Swift is positioning herself as a human acheiropoieton, something outside the dreary chain of reproductive existence."

Fine: I don't tend to make a point of parading around my naked umbilicus either. It's a revolting hole, a foetid salty lint-clogged scar, a gaping absence that's only a reminder of something irretrievably lost. With only that hole remaining the condition of humanity must always be one of absolute disconnection; we've been snipped apart from a primal unity, and it's not coming back until the day we die. Our genitals tell us that we can bring ourselves together, and even create something new; our navels whisper bitterly that we will always be alone. In the enlightened society of the future, they will always be covered; the belly button more than deserves its share of the socially mandated shame that somehow bypasses it in its mad rush southwards from nipples to pudenda. But it's not just that. The navel marks a person as a created being; by feigning for so long to be without one Taylor Swift is positioning herself as a human acheiropoieton, something outside the dreary chain of reproductive existence. A new Eve? Or something more? Something that exists now, and always has, and always will? [...]

All this, she said, was the work of none other than the award-winning Latin pop artist Enrique Iglesias, in his manifestation as Cloud-Man, an empyrean figure she seemed to identify with the God of Abraham. In the beginning, Enrique Iglesias created the heavens and the earth. It's not an uncommon belief; once you notice it you'll find it everywhere. [...]

Usually, this is where I'd rail against the coming Swiftopia, but here I don't really see the point. Taylor Swift is a grown woman and a successful recording artist; if she wants to transform herself into the fundamental substance of the entire Symbolic order that's her business, and I'm sure she'll do a decent job of it. The signifier is essentially hollow; it doesn't matter what it actually is as long as it performs its function. Taylor Swift might have to release a few less commercially-oriented albums to make all this fully possible -- one to allow the translation of Hegel into the new language, another to make sure football commentaries don't lose any of their immediate comprehensibility -- but, based on current trends, the whole process shouldn't take more than about a decade. The only question is why Taylor Swift is doing this; why she's decided to swallow the world.