Good morning Blogger friends

I breathe its yeasty steam,
feel the cold cream cheese
on my teeth.
Now I look at the bagel,
blink away cobwebs.

Then I stand on its hot,
craggy surface, and the steam
fogs my eyeballs.
I look up to see teeth
and a beard moving in for a bite.

Down the gullet, with coffee
from the hot black lake
on the desk.
Acid greets us: me, the coffee
and the bit of bagel.

It's not so bad. We're together
and the stomach lining
provides a soft surface.
A blink, I nod, and I'm at my desk,
wondering what I swallowed.

A strange dream...

You showed me the worm
that eats the flesh of your hand.
You still keep it.
"Isn't it beautiful?"
You asked me.

You said you were showing
your faith when I looked
inside your skin.
A blind white larva curled
around your organs, consuming.

Later you asked, "why
am I so pale, why
am I weak?"
I could not think
of an answer.

A Letter to My Distant Cousin

Coming to the grove I find every tree
hacked to a height, and it matters not:
tamarind or pear, tropical or temperate;
all are waist high to you, my distant cousin.

You are a man of mechanics, standards,
and comprehend, do you? the intricacies
of screwing together a standard design,
yet have nothing your own, or kill it in pruning.

I should have seen in your ragged garden,
untrimmed, and sick from the overgrowth
that where you restrain the hand, Gevurah,
you bury a tree of nothing; shears are your nourishment.

Time to heal, and merciful cuts,
not this sap-soaked hacking, cousin;
could we enjoy this fruit together?
Ah, but you have no art, my distant cousin.

Birds

ON a slightly less dire note, I give you a bit of verse that came to me, unasked, this evening. Perhaps, as time permits, it will benefit from several rounds of revision; but here it is, now, in its raw ethereal form.

Birds

I feel a tightness as I walk, and wonder
what so itches and stiffens my gate
and I am greeted by a stranger, one
of the ragged black-feather birds of our day.

A grackle, cackles, yellow eye stare
quick motion and flitting tale she glares
her eye directed at a stiff-packed rash of flesh,
there, undetected till now she points it.

Only a scale of the skin, I pick, curious, and the bird flits
and no, oh no that hardpacked hill of flesh splits
dry skin scratched and seeds scatter;
seeds drop from the rash rend, my wound.

Never would I bring these ragged birds
upon myself, though there is beauty I suppose,
the quicksilver glisten their wings, bright coins their eyes,
but feed one and bring them all, I know.

And seeing spelt pour from my wound
The first of these black wings, my guest begins
to fill her craw, caw, a harvest of spelt
should be shared with friends.

They flood the air, scratching, screeching
for love of the feast, damned beasts!
Rake aside flesh, and such precision, their beaks
honed, for naught but the rich seed concerns them.

In their raking scattering slaking cackling cawing
the excitement of carnival, they miss some grains
I suppose. And left in the rends of the rest of my flesh,
by careless claws, focused eyes, forged beaks, forgotten seeds grow.

Carved, caricatured in ruined lumps I lay, spent
from spewing spelt; but perhaps these ragged black glistening
quicksilver wings will be sated, less ragged for the feast.
But no, as dark wings descend on the last of me I know
they are ever more ravenous.