my blood is too stale for DNA,
and my seed is the rusted urine
darkening the foul corners
of underground train stations.
I dwell in the crawlspaces beneath being.
One time, a woman pushed me in a stroller,
And then sat on a curb by my side
And began eating apples from me
Biting into the red and green skin with her loose, yellow teeth
And then shrouding her tears in cigarette smoke.
Hurting as if disemboweled,
I crumbled over the last bruised apples
Heard the cigarette butt hiss in the rotten juice,
And the clap of a dumpster cover,
As loud as a gun but not as final.
Another time, I was there in a pile of clothes
On a bench in a frozen bus station,
Near a cart filled with empty bottles.
I was there for a few seconds,
If someone looked inside at that moment,
They would have seen me I think,
But it was a gray day heavy with absence.
I almost stood up,
But the clothes were too many, too thick,
Intertwined with my muscles and organs,
heavy like corpses.
My knees crumpled.
Defeated, I glimpsed myself in a broken mirror
sitting by a flattened can of Monster drink.
I was almost there, a cataract eye like a glob of phlegm
a few lethargic thoughts trapped in it
like bugs in a glue trap.
I see they’ve built new suicide barriers on the bridge.
But who has the stamina to jump in the first place?
I can’t even stand up in my dreams.
What I’m good at is falling through the cracks of the pavement
and dissolve into the pale, angry scratches of a pen out of ink,
or those of a razor on dead scars.
Last I heard,
my partial baptism has been postponed
until after my tentative funeral.
But who has the stamina to jump in the first place?
I can’t even stand up in my dreams.
What I’m good at is falling through the cracks of the pavement
and dissolve into the pale, angry scratches of a pen out of ink,
or those of a razor on dead scars.
Last I heard,
my partial baptism has been postponed
until after my tentative funeral.
