I get it
You want to leave
Fall off like split hairs and shed scabs
It’s the natural process of the body
The un-become and the dust-to-return
And I get it
The hangnails and the skin cells
Omens and auguries
Hold up a mirror to this necrosis of the brain
I want to leave
And so do you
And I’m sorry
But here we are wrapped up together
Tentpoles under flesh and the
Constant ache of splitting
Hands twined together
Ribbons round the wrists
Forehead pressed to forehead
Twins under a blanket of quicklime
In the same ditch
We want to leave
We want to leave
We want to leave

remember your limp cat after surgery
eyes caked in mammalian sleep
woozy around the house
resentful but too sore and tired to
hiss at you under the steam of medication
her soft paws, her uncontrolled
streams drooling around useless fangs
uncomfortable, as always, meeting your eyes
and this must be, you thought,
this must be
an alien abduction
and something of infant extraction and surgery
Fishing line through your tear ducts
your ripe fruit swollen face and eyes
peaches and grapes before you were weaned
Pricked through you
you blossomed to cough up chunks of wisdom teeth
****** sleep paralysis flinging insects up your nose
to infect your skin with itch
in this bed where they laid me down and lied to me
that i was my own, leading myself to The Land of Get Better
when even a spayed cat could tell you in words
as clear as those of an assault survivor or an invalid
you are not your own
a claim is laid to the body by the first hand that peels it open
cracks the ribs and gauges the ripeness of swelled organs
feathering fingers out over the veins
a hammer and chisel to the jaw and now you’re
introducing the self you used to be
gnawing around mandarin to a room of ghosts
yes this must be
this must be
an alien abduction

You love flowers in the springtime, like a classic girl in love,
Sweetness heavy in the air when sugar’s not enough.
All the lies that daddy told go down better with honey,
And gifts make you uncomfortable if they cost too much money.

So, take weeds from the street, and steal prizes from the garden
To soften up the heart inside you that the world has hardened.
You like it that they’re for the Dead, for Maidens, and the Sick,
For of the three you often feel that you could take your pick.

They make you understand the things so emptily talked about
By Film and English majors running at the mouth for clout:
Rebirth and Renewal, and the fever of the Spring,
How Death pervades the world and cracks up every lovely thing!

You hold the promises of these that ooze from every flower,
Collected on your raw red knees, kowtowing in the bower.
You press *** flat in poetry, and Death in dictionaries.
The Garden of Eden makes good tea when dried with leaves and berries.

little animal walking in the dark
chased by the heartbeat, heartbeat,
the hammer that says
die alone in the dark
the downswing of it cruel on the skull
of the suffering little animal
in its misery in the road
You still take an analgesic
and feel nothing
a cure is a poison is a cure is a poison
you’re grateful to the berry
that killed you
and scared of the river water
that brought you back
scared of the stutter of that
heartbeat, heartbeat
the ache in the chest
the shortness of breath
the voice saying that was enough to die
now pay enough to live
heart-throat animal stumbling on a dark road
it can pay you as well as a rock can fly

Philosophy stretches back into pre-literate mist
You can watch it do this when you close your eyes and you are not yet asleep
This is just a ladder of time, a helix of faulty ancient dichotomies
G to C
Touch the step called “light and dark” and watch it resolve into weary gray
A to T
Touch this fragile rung, “man and woman,” and watch it crumble into dust
Nothing there for you to stand on, child, so don’t worry about it
Make a new ladder, a new rung, and **** them all
The grasping hands of the wordless past, the gibbering tongues
The blank faces that barely knew what living even meant
You know what it means.
Now do it.

The body’s unrelenting in its pain
Because God said it has to be this way
Light will shine and it will be this way
Some pain is unrelenting and must chase
Chase round a sleepless room from lay to lay
Light shines and you will know the chase of pain
You wake with it upon each newborn day
From couch to dining chair to bed you chase
And unrelenting it must be this way
Your spine all like a matchstick in its splay
A burnt out head and brittle down the length
Light color bone and splintered down the length
How can this driftwood bear the weight of pain
It has to. It just has to be that way.

Washing berries for a pie that I cook for someone else,
If they were for me alone I’d eat them straight and raw from the carton,
And if pesticides killed me, then I suppose I was a pest.
That’s no revelation;
I’ve tasted it on the skins of countless gala apples.
And what about other poisons, laced into blackberries and broccoli?
I can’t count them or know their names but I can hope
That one day they’ll gurgle in my gut like
The last note of a song,
And that’ll be the last I hear of it.