My people, I reach down from my white death cloud:

To my people, each one I love a little,

sometimes enough to exhaust them beyond their means --

My blessed babies eating biscuits

of industrial sugar.

Smoking like steel factories --

dark matter binds their hair,

bug nests in the pits of their arms and knees

warming their wings by the hot red glow of the wet gents.

People walk with bricks of cement stuck to the bottom of their foam shoes.

Murmurs in the gutter between the dead cigarettes --

that his bones hurt,

and shh, please, don't remind me about my bones.

Statues for faces, lips never curl in any direction.

 

The dog will cross the street when he is walking north or south --

any other way will give him jay-walking tendencies.

The loaf-cats hump between a roof and a roof gutter.

Sleep time I will hear them whining, each one, and my spine will electrocute itself,

and my face will crumble down and wrinkle like a cemetery junkie,

and my hair will cut itself short like a man's hair,

and my eyes ignite by the fire behind them.

Lungs punctured by cigarettes,

my hands groan.

 

The evening bird in the window comes to the auction,

and I am sold for two twigs, the elbow of a puzzle piece,

and the pointing finger of a child statue.

I wave goodbye to the infant I once was, to the adolescent who angered me,

shake hands with the weathered garbage I stand inside.

The mannequin with a brown curtain mane

falls over herself into the sink, and weeps into the water,

and the dishes are a choir of wealthy men.