I'm just getting in the bath,
Someone else wrote the letter,
I don't want to make a. Mess.

Draw me the water
I point at the tap
Burden no family
Hold my head under icecaps.

Merkel Cells, diluted sensation,
The end of fingertips cant feel your
Flesh.
Shriveling in the cold,
Shivering to stop freezing,
But I cant. What am I doing?
Can I want this now, errectores pilorum erected.
Have I set motion to,
Cogs in a watch I cant adjust.

my lungs mark absolute zero
this is me sitting in chemistry class
english
10th grade
asking sam to suffocate with me
every alvioli is pinned by ****** as thick as knitting needles
my chest is permafrost
my sternum, antarctica
the ribs hollow out
capillary beds lose all the haem
out of their erythrocytes

I'm losing St. Elmo's Fire.

The baths still panting out,
Water roars, gushing spout.
Proud the current sweeps me through,
The porcelain lining this white hell bathroom.
It's bone cannot hide from my blood,
As if I'm isotope 226 of Radium.
Heat seeking marrow.
My serum is Hodgkins Lymphoma,
Tearing through sheeting tile,
Like a young cancer child,
Afflicted,
Leukemia,
No chance,
No good blood left,
To let.


Soon, it will all be gone, and the rivers that
freeze in my arms, and the ribs that are icicles
form, and the atrial canal is not like Venice,
it is the Rhine in winter, the Volga during
the solstice.

Spring will never come again.
Spring slipped its head into the bath water, like my own.

DID I see a crucifix in your eyes
and nails and Roman soldiers
and a dusk Golgotha?
  
Did I see Mary, the changed woman,
washing the feet of all men,
clean as new grass
when the old grass burns?
  
Did I see moths in your eyes, lost moths,
with a flutter of wings that meant:
we can never come again.
  
Did I see No Man's Land in your eyes
and men with lost faces, lost loves,
and you among the stubs crying?
  
Did I see you in the red death jazz of war
losing moths among lost faces,
speaking to the stubs who asked you
to speak of songs and God and dancing,
of bananas, northern lights or Jesus,
any hummingbird of thought whatever
flying away from the red death jazz of war?
  
Did I see your hand make a useless gesture
trying to say with a code of five fingers
something the tongue only stutters?
did I see a dusk Golgotha?

Stop.
Now feel the tongue inside your mouth.
Notice the words forming between your teeth,
their texture, their colour,
where they come from.

Now look towards me
No, not at me
but at the air between our faces

Do you see it?
It wades there, suspended,
kneading the space, folding into itself
and waiting for us.

It arches its back as it’s ****** into you,
as it’s ****** into me.
It wants to be inside of us.

But be careful how you treat the air;
it likes to be inhaled slowly, deeply,
swim through your body, wrap around
your bones and lick the edges of your soul.

Do you feel it?

Do not trap the air at the back of your throat,
where it cannot dance, where it cannot give.
And do not bend it it ways it will not bend.  
Do not strangle it with your tongue and spit it out
tripping over itself.  The air does not take kindly to
such abuse so when that sharp lick of breath reaches me,
my veins, it will toss and turn in your leftover angst.

Caress the air, the little piece of sky before us,
massage its shaking limbs with your own,
let it travel up from the meat of your toes carrying
with it the scent of your blood.

I promise you, it will dance between the grace of your lips.

Or better yet,
let the air between us hang loosely in space
Let it settle like silent water;
unscathed, transparent,
so we can see eachother clearly.

Innocence and bliss
Play pretend on my grandfather’s porch.
They bring laughter and joy with them
And never invite fear or worry.

I hesitate to return,
For fear that I shall never leave
Because as my childhood memories grow and expand
My fondness soon turns to envy

For I can remember a time,
A time when the world was mine.
Where everyone cheered for me
And rejoiced when I found glee

A time when Mondays meant new beginnings,
Not tardies and regrets.
When books led to happy endings,
Instead of essays and frets.

But as I set my sights ahead
It seems that some wise words are never dead
“For all children grow up, except one”
And I’m far from done.

As a wound heals and scars
So should I
Never to forget my childhood
But to simply move on.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,  
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,  
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs  
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.  
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots  
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;  
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots  
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling,  
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;  
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,  
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .  
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,  
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,  
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace  
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,  
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,  
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;  
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood  
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,  
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,  
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,  
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est  
Pro patria mori.