they’re rubbing Patroclus’ ashes in my wounds like salt
the ropes around my wrists
the menthol in the back of my throat
the black, bacteria-filled bits between the bricks
where does it stop, where does it END?
I’ve got you here, in the back of a black truck trapped
trapped in your body, trapped in your eyes, heart open, eyeballs ajar
they pulled off insect wings and kept them in jars
this one labeled wars, this one closed borders, this one prison system
FUCKTHEPRISONINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX
I said with eyes bright who are the women on the street
they drove a black limousine
they wanked on the pavement
Rousseau drove his car backward booty out mooning
all the girls in long ballgowns coming out of the opera
and laughing
they put my hands against one of the boards — do you remember?
from the doctor’s office when we were kids
put your hands against it it senses warmth
makes a big green handprint — do you remember?
waiting for your dad to get out of the psychiatrist’s office
waiting waiting trying not to hear anything
making art that fades away in another couple seconds
but that’s what’s incredible — it’s there — and then — it’s not
I put my arms around her shoulder and rolled a cigarette
and burned her thigh in little circles
I remember watching them get infected
and putting fly wings in them
and then the skin healed
OVER
the wounds and then she had fly-skin
and now I broke all their jars and they’re cutting me with the shards
they’re tinged in yellow insect blood and bright red mosquito blots
and they push my hands over and over again down on spiders
so I feel the awful crunch
of the life leaving their bodies
sickening and vomiting everything I didn’t eat
vomiting up my stomach lining and my organs one by one
until I’m a sack of skin clinging to bones and they use the bones
to carve out the bacteria-ridden blackness between the bricks
and I see you and your cigarette and your bow and your laugh
and I weep for you, Patroclus.
