The Box

My soul has hands that feed my mouth
delight boxes marked “poison”.
I have second hands that are language.

I gave up youth for silent lips that
spread too thick. Two plump
pulsating cream puffs injected
with secrecy.

The boxes piled up to a thousand acreage;
a still wall with a calm face,
sipping tea with the Queen of servitude.
I have become a slave to iron curtains
and black rods.

Once upon a decade ago, I slept with
meaty warriors with bull-dog ears.
They carried sturdy death machines that
slaughtered innocence.
I heard them slice my siblings
to hamburger, while my stable body hid
in a homosexual bed.

I bled out of my ears for one tight night,
then woke up to the funerals.
I faced a casket with strawberry frosting
trim, small china pieces laid across
the mahogany lid.

I tipped with warriors, drinking their poison,
swallowing fear in full, single gulps.
They offered me a butchering tool
and I pulled it in, deep through
tissue and cartilage, into the warm cherry
pie that was wrapped inside my body.

I melted with metal. I succumbed to
murderous beasts that carry
angry weapons,
and without useful hands,
or mouth,
I became a box.

Blackbird Song

I have let callous hands
unzip my heavy breath,
free me of metal,
cold restraint.

I have talked to wind
chimes short of frost,
of shine, and let
windy hands slap falling
leaves off
their easy limbs.

I have laid in blue bed
skies, covering mortality
with surging white mass;
pillows for eager
eyeballs. I popped each blue ball,
socket clean of collagen,
of cell, blackbirds emerging,
fleeting,
feeding on my sight.

What they must have seen!
What images must be coursing through
silk ebony feathers!
It is, surely, enough to take
a blackbirds
sight,
enough to pluck wispy wings
from a torrid
feathered friend.