Call it migraine mother. Call it something fierce.

I spoke with Death once & she ripped Plague through
my skull. Hollowness danced a waltz on my frontal
lobe like those girls in Strasbourg in 1518.

She tasted like the sensation of carrying an
ember between your teeth & learning
how to spit bruised fire; blue & black.

In other words, she tasted like bitterness tempered
with a sick sort of delight in familiarity. Pain is a circlet
of drums around the temples; a breach of holiness.

*

Call it a legacy of illness. Call it bloodlust.

If you’ve been in the air long enough,
you’ll start to wonder if the ground is real.
I’m a sky shark, can’t stop moving.

I skipped one pill & bled for three weeks straight.
No children, but on my walk home during crow-dusk,
the graveyard treetops blazed alight with wings. Children of

a thousand high school fantasies spoke madly
into the sky. Maybe at some point you should stop
taking them. Maybe at some point you should stop.

 

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