the third mate last,
lashed to the helm,
a punishment, a lashing
for having
read and let
the taste of words unkempt,
hash my essence,
thus pelted,
excised, my flesh,
unto a wearied
death by a thousand cuts

my artistic force bleeds,
I am realistic,
there is no
superman savior,
there is only
life after death,
where dear god,
last wishing, it is a world of
silence perfected

I know I promised no more
on this shopworn, discounted topic,
but I read and I weep
my essence seeps, pores pouring,
tried the ancient cure of ignoring,
but anguished curiosity begs
for bliss
asking,  
just try once more,
knowing that ignorance
can never be blissful

confounded, words indelible,
the poems tattooed trite,
with an unheard last sigh,
what makes them think
every stray dog of a thought
deserves sharing

tender each with word
with such selected caring,
arguing back and forth,
and always losing
and always winning
the argument over the
Final Selection,
the process holocausts me,
I am not a survivor anymore,
just an over killed victim

to tattered ribbons sliced,
no seamstress can resurrect what once was,
endlessly they celebrate their flesh's cutting,
they cannot know their words,
alpha beta me to where,
the ink is drained and flushed,
and withered fingers lose their moist urgent,
discomfited composure

and

all the words I know are a plague
upon my shotgun house,
I am bleeding, but that does not mean
my poetic permission lives,
it only means my blue blood
surrenders it oxygen upon contact
with an atmosphere of trite
and I swear to you it hurts to much to

                                       write,
hurts more than breathing

do not write to me of your pain,
write instead with painstaking care
and let me read thy crafted composition
and say this,

*thus I am staked to you,
penetrated in ways ,
that each cut of thine,
ready welcomed
for it is sublime,
a human humidifier,
putting back the moisture lost
by tears shed over wastrel poems