you’ve got these filaments in your eyeballs
light bulb filaments,
flicker, spark
you’ve got this dark
spot you say
you’re afraid
it’s a cataract, but it’s just a shade
and I’m not afraid of ghosts,
I know how to stare back at them,
show them I’m alright, I swear
if you touch me, it won’t hurt
you, though my clumsiness does escape me
now and again, like when I hit your
eye socket or cheek unwittingly
in my sleep

And the worst thing is,
    I muttered to my right thumb’s torn cuticle,

The Absolute Very Worst Thing In the History of the Universe is
    My tongue flounders to find
    what I want to say.
    So I say,
I’m talking to myself.
    I bite the cuticle,
    and it stings in that way
    that somehow makes me want to do it again.

The Absolute Very Worst Thing in the History of the Universe is
   that I don’t know.
   I don’t know what I want,
   I mean.

The Absolute Very Worst Thing in the History of the Universe is
    to have a frozen skeleton,
    I sample, though I’m not quite sure
     what I mean to mean.
    
    To have these metal fish-hooks
      snagged in my skin,
      one pulling north, the other dragging south.
      You see?

   To keep digging holes and sowing seeds
      that I have no idea what they’ll grow to be
      (pumpkins or daisies
      or something awful.  Like beets.)

but I’m blistered and there’s sweat that stings my slivered palms (not in the good way) but I keep digging and digging and I can’t stop because someone says I have to move forward, forward, forward, but really I’m just moving in circles,  and I’m not doing anything but something, and what is the point, in that, really?

But the worst thing is,
    that knowing that to be happy,
    and not even like a kid,
    beaming, triumphantly holding his lost tooth up in the air,
                (I’ve given up on that)
    but in the,
                I suppose I can sleep at night
                way,
                (these days, I apparently talk to myself instead,)  

The worst thing is
      knowing that to feel warm,
      to feel things,
      Something drags me forward,
               in my stupid shoes that make me hobble instead of walk,


I must keep moving forward
in spite of
the shade of a ghost,

     that kisses the hollow of my neck
     traces his fingers down my spine
     and whispers,

you’re getting tired.
     Come lie down with me.

Clean shaven, bowler-hatted, crisp-suited men
are spattered across the canvas,
       with stiffened spines,
              vertebrae militarily ordered,
Plunging toward the ground,
       not falling,
              plunging,
              leaden,
from a sky the color of a smokers’ lungs,
        gray and blue from lack of oxygen,
sputtering them out.
       They seem not to notice.


Blank-faced, easy-armed, composed,
they seem not to notice they are doomed
        to be piles of splintered bones
                webbed with sinew and lumps of skin,
Thinking as they head toward the ground,
         praying,
         “If I pretend it’s not happening,
         maybe I’ll be okay”
from the heartless pavement,
         gravity with the whole world behind it,
yanking them like teeth from the air.
         Only a few clenched fists betray their terror.


Or,
the

Choking, muted, and embittered city
could be letting them go,
          allowing them to evaporate
                 back to the sky where they belong,
Welcoming them home, that sky,
           not with violence,
                  welcoming,
                  gently,
to a sky where ennui is beautiful,
           star after star after star,
whispering that they are important, splendid, lovely.
           One can only hope.

I knew a man who looked like an egg.
His shoulders,
they did this odd thing where they
drooped.
He was a rather droopy man.
His shoulders
sort of melted into his body like
those eyeballs in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”
sliding slickly down into a congealed mess.

It was worse after he shaved his beard.

There was this flabby bit of skin that the beard had previously concealed.

It connected his chin to his chest,
smudging his entire body
into this perfectly oval shape

that rested upon chicken legs.

You know that question
that overused
“What came first, the chicken or the egg?”
question?

I think I found the Queen Mother of them both.

You might not have noticed,
but
I whisper so that
I don’t frighten you,
muttering masterpieces
in the shower,
to the dripping drips of the coffee ***,
veiling my genius under corded sweaters,
keeping the secrets of the universe locked behind my lips.

You might not have noticed
my chapstick-smoothed lips,
but
they have more things to do
than speak to you,
Nerves trembling underneath origami-paper skin
as our lips meet,
myself a connoisseur of kisses,
and I mean kisses,
I am in control-

You might not have noticed
I am utterly in control
of
absolutely every room that I walk into.
I’ll pull eyes toward myself with the furtive glances
that I keep safely in my pocket
and even the
golden bubbles of champagne
leap to meet my tongue.

I’ll conceal your shifting hands,
Palms pressed,
Calluses to torn cuticles,
All thumbs and knuckles and nails,
And I don’t know her, violet-scented creeping infestation
and
How you’ve worn me down, there’s a hole in my sleeve-
And I’ve let you chew on me, sweat on me, I’ve
I’ve kept you warm
And
You used me,
You used me to conceal
illicit activities,
hands in pockets, shrugging eyes off,
never been cigarettes in there, nope,

And you let her peel me off of you, the one with violet hands
that weren’t so gentle, but violent,
voracious,
tearing in at you,
as I watched from the floor
she scratched the skin that I kept safe and warm,
and
and
Why did you leave me crumpled on the floor and then
And then let her take me home, draped over her bony shoulders
to billow like a parachute,
before she squeezed me half to death that night in her sleep?

I could really go for some sort of surgery right now.
The sort that I could just
open my chest like a door,
swing it open, creaking treasure-chest,
to reveal that throbbing *****,
just to make sure it’s all connected,
because I swear to god it’s there,
but I can’t help but do more than  gaze at it with disdain
and mild amusement.