when you call me by my name

it’s a warm cup of coffee on a cold morning
the scent wafting room to room
the sleep in my eyes just falls away
and although I can’t see you
I can hear the smile on your lips
and I can feel the warmth in your chest

when you call me by my name

It becomes difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible to reach an end, a conclusion, but there are two ends? or maybe
they're the beginnings of the same ends. I become
bogged down by uncertainty which, like a snake, coils around inside of me and ties me up in knots, not to be outdone
my mind becomes a loaded gun, my eyes look down the barrel where my tongue acts as the silencer that silences the
rattling of the snake.

Drinking milk to ease a stomach ulcer, checking my pulse because I am much older than I used to be and so is my uncertainty.

Issues becoming broader as the nights seem so much longer and my life is getting shorter and so am I.

my shrink could not bring herself to say,
that one day I would shrink away
to nothing,
but I knew that.

I began to think that burning one's fingers had nothing on one spitting ink,

and with this in mind, I found my palette lined with asbestos.

The lights turn blue with cigarette smoke and the fumes from petroleum lamps, cramps in my hands creasing the words that I write,
a slight irritation in my bowels which could be me or the emergence of too many unnecessary vowels.

I question the use of the juice from an artery
to lay down on this page a few lines of cheap poetry.