it’s not difficult
to know what to do
with 500 heads of garlic
but the garlic scapes
that’s another question

i’ve been grinding them
with basil, oil, nuts
and parmesan and freezing
the pesto
but the freezer is stuffed now
with strawberries and soon
the beans will come
then the broccoli
and the kale

i’m not a survivalist
but if the electricity
were ever to be cut
for a day,
well, i’d have to
haul out the generator and
today I picked up my old
two horsepower pump
from the shop
i use it to draw water up from
the pond which is 10 meters
lower than the garden
i am gradually learning to
look after myself

it’s been a lifelong project

a kidney bean
once became lodged
deep inside
my ear canal
and i don’t think
i need to remind you
how a sweet polyp
like that
will sprout roots
among the white axons
grow throughout the squid
and drink in salvation
from the brainpan

god knows
i’ve tried what i can
even
turned to the
purgative artillery
strong medicine for sure
but
my throat muscles
only strained and expelled
a bulky stool
so gassy

and when
the shaman
sat atop me
with his covey of broken clam shells
scraped the flesh from back of
my neck

wouldn’t you know it
the beast only sneered
from the hole and spat

so i guess
i’m resigned now
to co-exist with my friend
and no
as you’ve gathered
it’s not a symbiosis

but i’ll get by

at the filth buffet
the ear mites
huddle while a
poignant noodle
holds back
the skin tags
that flutter
like jellyfish
in the dental dam

the cockroach’s *****
silky and lustrous
beckons to
buttery beetle flesh
finally unleashed

i know now
why i planted
that vineyard so
many years ago now

it is so
when you are four
you can walk
up and down the rows

while your parents watch
from a close enough distance
and you marvel at the
tall foliage and fruit
hanging so close and ripe
and you realize but for a brief moment

that you never want to grow up

if they were to
strap me down
upon the concrete bed
aside the
polished steel
of the
Dairy Queen
Machine

modified just for me
with the carnival calliope
and that special
polyethylene
hose
the "new car smell"
threaded
with such care
from the
spigot
to
my
gullet

would i bear it well?

would i fight back
when they threw the switch
and the warm
slop
began to
flow?

i’ve heard
they sometimes
fill these machines with
medical waste

but
this tastes
different
today

oh sure
i might struggle
even as
my abdomen distends
my fibres unravel
the tar
seeps out from me
and wets
my
spine

i might
risk
everything
anything
for
a second chance
i might
but then
again
i haven’t
before

so why start now?

the dentist reshapes
the bridge of your nose
his breath of garlic
it seeps from your pores
while you sleep
but when you
have a real problem
you call the plumber
to fish out your stomach lining
from the sink drain
using an eggbeater
that he operates

by pumping air
into a rubber bulb
that’s spent too much time
seeing the inside of organs
like the piñata that you raised
high up to the oak beams
with your climbing ropes and
split open with a pick axe

out poured whole chickens
and blood sausages, hams
and the lies
you told to your children

you once dreamed
of a melon
and the boy
who butchered it
with a ballpoint pen
as though he was carving out
the back of the neck
of the white man
who killed his father
long ago on the
Nebraska prairie

but now those
melons
sit neatly in a room
under the glow of
ultraviolet lamps
aside the petri dishes

and you watch contently
as the whirring meters
pump plasma into them

and yes
you can feel it inside
an eyeball can be peeled
you say
but not like a grape
and anyway

melons should not be tampered with
those small citadels of virtue
wisdom and power
much too much
like us
when we sleep