but to make bullets out of kites
and sacrifice the coherent messenger beast
for human agency and last rites,
I will light a stick of blended incense cake
from the Orient and walk home;
and that walk where a public mess of puke
made me stagger and groan,
I never crossed the street to leave my stomach alone.
I walked through the vomit
and then through the grass of the sanitarium
cleansing my boots of repulsion
and went home on the dust of a comet.
I looked up at the fourth floor elevator bay
where we compared wrist stitches and phone numbers
committed to memory.
From the doctor's desk nearby you could see my parlor
and yard, through my window to where I knit
and piece together chain mail for defense of drunkards
and the belligerent crimes we all commit.
The doctor is dead and no replacements can be found.
The walk home is hell on the arches
with only climbing shoes to wear to get there, curled.
Envious of the senior citizen center's relief of living,
the soft rooms of floral wallpaper and smoker's suite
ovening the hallway of oxygen and too-late pangs to revert
the fuck ups. The howling cell of secret regret,
the town hall meeting to discuss what best way to slay
the mandrake making a mess of all these streets.
They'll have to pool their nurses and orderly staff
just to mop up the blood from the femoral and jugular
bursts, when she was like "it's my time to go"
and he was like "don't let the hesitation stop your knife"
--this was when the restraints came but to no avail--
the pressure from the stress position worked like a vise
squeezing what was left inside out into careless night.
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