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Now reading
Self-portrait with phonemic analysis
I kneel at the Calvary,
the sun—pelting on my skin like a rainstorm
of fragmented pieces of glass,
I drag my self towards a crucifix
where phonology says:
[a boy] —> [a broken boy] / [grief]—[grief]
I think myself a guitar’s string
blessing the threnodies of the aches in this poem,
who will crush pomegranates
into juice for me?
Who will beat the bush of this boy into
a floral garden of roses?
Who will pour joy like a fricative sound
into the living of this boy?
I seek the rule to the deletion of grieving, where:
[grief] —> [deleted] / [bliss]—[bliss]
Where I will sleep through the night
without the body of a knife lurking in my dreams.
Where I will sleep through the night
without drowning in the pool of my own fears.
Where I will sleep through the night
& not wake up as a butterfly’s wing.
But insertion says:
[insert]—> [grief] / [bliss]—[bliss] of a boy.
Recently, I touch things & they flower out a
monochrome
of death & my father—how he squeezed life out of him
like an orange.
Dear poet, when will you stop performing an autopsy
with poems on all the broken things you know,
especially including yourself?
This poem, a psych ward, this poem, a psych nurse
which grew from your psyche.
Like a wood frog, I’m still holding my pee
through hours, through the night
where pain is a bagpiper blowing its pipe
to me in these times of war.