The Price You Pay

Why has the way always got to be physical? Skin, food, blood, IV drips. Collapsed lungs. Fungus. Diseased gums. Foot in mouth. Greek for the letter. Black for cancer. She is merely physical. You can’t be bothered With courtesy, prose or art. Much more hollow than I thought at first. If I pick her up, she’s dead; at least it feels that way. Her lungs have been spun with a loom. They are that useless. Strange fruit. Drips from our lips. Sometimes I think it odd that Billie was your favorite woman. You hated all the others. Raw pits and ulcers. They had to cut a slit in you seven inches long that never healed. And all the inches of stitches were parallel to your arms. You couldn’t even lick your wounds. Sometimes I think you’d be better left unborn. Young in raw sunlight and hay. Torn silk, blue sky. A little hole to hold the both of us. You, dying famished. You never ate, but just drank it straight down the tube. Hypodermic needles. Put you in kaleidoscopic state. The days of lolling on bales of hay are over. The price you pay for stomachaches.