RECLAIMING

Today, I reclaim myself.

With my front removed, you see your own surrender.

With my eyes as tunnels, you lose your own way.

With my tongue and cheeks reassigned, you hear your own irony asking if you can breathe through your helmet, if you like what you feed yourself, and if your stores of ammunition help you sleep.

PUNCTURING

Today, your ratio-hum founders in some must-be plasma, and the plaque of your heart stuffs someone else's shirt.

Whose plaster hides the beauty of you? Whose fostering of counts and costs and futures of cake mete out slabs in time to a mechanical arm?

From under your mantle - your skin of cream - you wretch a force-fed ballast - a spouting of rock to sink all melodies.

DRAMATIZING

Today, you levitate as emotional balcony in the dark-dark of man-made surround.

You swell in absorbed pause.

Your crowded sense of things kicks only a little, with no room in a space full of asking.

BREATHING

Today, you notice an old string.

It's wound 'round your throat, and tied to something in the distance.

You grimace, trying to see a full form at the other end.

The leash constricts your throat; your ears swell; you slobber.

You would like to breathe freely. You wouldn't mind eating.

You cut the string.