See This

Another week, and again an organ has collapsed inside me.
Hear now and see my thorax cave-whistle when I prise my ribs
open, this tropical darkness enewing runt fuchsia viscera.
To my pen pal in Italy, I wrote mostly of my aches and insomnia,
all rinsed in the provincial philosophy that pours from my tap.
I could not match her enthusiasm for Cicero’s rhetoric. All is
commensurate; she ended our letter-trading to focus on studies.
My limbs dress in kudzu. The moon doesn’t entrance me.
“Your problem is that you have no garden to tend to.”
Your convivial tone. “It’s not good to be so idle in life.”
And a walk in my neighborhood is unblemished by blossoming---
all febrile, this construction, all tonsils and no flowerbeds.
The city planners should look into that. Is this Coke chilled?
I have lunch with my mother, and recount funny videos
I’ve seen recently---no jokes of my own to honor her presence.
I write, but I’m no comedy writer. My piano-playing is dismal.
I draw cloddish pictures that bugger description. And the
platoon of red votive candles lilts in the wind of white vestments.
A small fry of twelve, I would craft my own ocean liners,
stealing real vessels’ likenesses then devising new interiors.
I calculated their contours on taped sheets of graph paper.
I memorized anything I had read only once. Now, chronic ennui.
The long days are odd-numbered. The light peers in slanting.
All birds’ cries are unnamed to me except for the seagull’s.
“The Japanese have made an art of emptiness, you know.
Why don’t you try meditating? Learn to make peace with it.”
My own nuclear clock is ticking toward midnight, another live
symptom of biological-political decay. I’m soon to implode,
and ring in the new year with a pair of debriding black strophes.
My pen will incise like a scalpel if I earn it. I’ll sing finest sutures.
My greed is intolerable---I, indigent dhampir, who thinks
he can thrive on the blood of his muses. And I’m hoping that
news broadcasts will brighten up soon. I’m waiting for things
to return to their right shapes. I ask you, my Gulf Stream,
to keep holding tight; the land of my ancestors depends on
your beneficence. And I’m hoping to get well soon, and grasp
inspiration with ten sticky fingers and two broad, red palms.
I’m waiting for something or other to find me in glory.
It’s odorless and tasteless, but I’ll know when I spot it.

Author's Note

Published by Eunoia Review, June 2025:
https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2025/06/07/see-this/