This Sickness

Sickness comes at interludes, when
light burns brighter than
sun stars, when Anger dashes in
to catch the aftermath.

We battle for the scenery.
Touching base, both reaching for
the flag, for proclamation.

It is mine. This sickness is mine
to water or see to wilt.
I find no fault in either,
both are stars of polar regions,

imploding a billion light years away
from me. I will awake with sweaty palms,
the enemy dripping down my back.

I sit in the night, like a sauna,
saluting the grace of the Gods
for keeping what is meant for the skies
quietly away from these hands.

My medicine will come clockwise, sneaking up
on me, on little twinkling toes.
I never miss this time because there is no
better place to live or to die.

Skin

Tonight, I peel indifference from my face
and hang it up for tomorrow.
Ice is melting. A flood will take me soon
as my body tries to mend. A two-inch puddle
of regret is enough to drown in.
I can never go home again.

One day, I might rent a floor in a busy city.
I might spread my nerves around just enough
to find them.
I will step quickly, palpitate on
hard wood, and scrub off old footprints
that walked there before me.
Empty space for my Self to rot in.

I will peel the skin of potatoes and think
of the last time I kept someone warm,
and like my face, I will lay the skin aside,
to shrivel and dry, as I,

and home will become so long ago,
from a place where my body was fresh, but cold,
from a time when a young man whispered his flames
against my bare shoulder, and
I fell in to him and froze.

Cimmerian Fog

My mind is not black.
My mind is not black, even
if my words are ashen.

I write about a Cimmerian Fog,
but I am not black.

I have been carved like a pumpkin.
I am dying just like that.
Every day, I sit on a porch
waiting to start the process of rot.

It is slow,
and so I move like honey
wishing to be baked in a hot, hot oven
where warm hands will pull
me out hungrily
and eat me.