I still write letters for the
words I cannot mumble, as if my mouth were
taped and my tongue cut with paper. A cadaver
in a car, caught myself hung with a
leather belt, seat back and hoarse and
holding a knife in the mind, tracing a
gash in the neck with a crooked finger and I
still tremble in the streetlight, swallowed the
shards of teeth shattered on an asphalt grave
but these affairs cloak the intellect like gauze for a
damaged brain, I am faulty wiring and a
house on fire, boiling wood of humid fever,
white like bloodless death. I still echo in an
ivory tree, face down and clotted and drowned
in a dream, I still fade as if inhaled by the
winds and I am only diminishing