Merry Go Round

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As a whole it is a random disjointed mess - as if it is trying hard to be a stream of consciousness but the narrator is a bad liar.

The whole is filled with so many red herrings in the name of creating imagery in interesting ways it creates an abundance of work for the reader without the payoff.  

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Merry Go Round

Everyone but me was happy
quarantine was over. The zipper of the desert highway 
tapped a vein and ran again, red and yellow poppyseeds 

zipper of a highway is fine - I don't know that it is that original but - how many ways can a highway be described I suppose.  The problem is - and it occurs over and over - the underlying image is irrelevant and rather than revelatory it seeks to obfuscate but to what end.  Are sippers, poppy seeds, living flesh (yuck), folding chairs, herons, etc important to the central metaphor or just less inconvenient ways of saying what you are thinking.  This is what I mean by red herrings.

packed full of living flesh. I’d been watching the city 
sitting on a little pile of rocks, feeling sick about the growing stream 
of human traffic. Fourteen meters up the road, a Shepherd 

stream of human traffic is probably cliche.  Actually - and I am not sure about this part - it is probably another red herring as everyone knows what human traffic is yet I see no  evidence of it resolving to that.  With the vein-poppy-human traffic references (and later dope references) I assume the narrator is a junkie but if so they are a tangential junkie as it never becomes important (as far as I can tell, perhaps the whole is a peyote dream)

dripping from the jaw, one leg tucked like a folding chair 
or heron underneath. Her eyes unpacking mine 
the way a baby looks at you. A bad decision chased a steak

or similar exotic dope, the feathered scent of fried potatoes 
dipped in cedarpine had carried her up to this carousel
that seems to keep accelerating, where the horses 

roll their eyes as if accepting death: What’s 
she doing here, the oats are ripe and we are 
heavy, we must not be taken we will not 

be taken we must RUN—it's no use
trying to reason with a skittish, hungry horse. 
You’d sooner scoop the mountain 

on an interview with time. I’d learned to tie the loops 
of my discretionary mask so I could pull it down to talk
with one hand, leave the other free. She's twitching as it lifts 

a coin of Lunchable ham to her lips—easy, who’s the sweetest 
baby, good girl, take it slow—you don’t want her to run again, 
the way the cars keep coming now, like when it snowed for weeks.

I feel it continues in this vein (did I just make a pun?  I can't even tell at his point)  without a payoff of any sort.  Is there a horse?  A dog?  Both?  Did the dog turn into a horse?  Is horse another name for heroin?  I like an aspect of mystery in a poem and am a firm believer a narrator should exist within their mythos without explaining it just feels a little overdone to me.

Thanks for posting

Thanks for reading. Yes, I agree this is just too manic and doesn't amount to much. I am trying to let the rope out, will keep trying.

Perhaps there is a central metaphor that is the key to unlocking the whole and I am just not getting it for some reason - perhaps give me a clue and I will give it another shot