Cadaver with a Pulse

It won't be long for you now.
Next time, you will sleep
eternally
on a restaurant table.
They will publicly airlift
you from your meal where
you will be consumed
by sliders with mustard.

You will ascend to nothingness.
You are already nothingness to us.

Edge of my seat horror movie,
you’re the good part,
inverted good preaching
the hypocrisy of the world.

I am a fan of Bukowski.
You and him, both, my heroes.
Hell of a hero. I push you
from my car, cheek to gravel,
you fly, a different sort of flying,
nasty bird, disease ridden,
Hector's defiled body.

Your loud words, paralleling
the rain. There's no need for thunder.
Your words are enough, dog-walked
words pissing on the pavement.

I add to your storm, your piss puddle.
My eyes no longer rain for you.
I yell back my position, my one goal:
blonde safety for my sister,
my Scarlet.

Your bullets are in small form,
orange bottle cradled. You
use them to die, but you have
no guarantee of a comparable
conceptual heaven.

The radio disgustedly spoke
of a woman who used a dead
man's prescription for drugs,
worthy unique news to them.
I laughed.
I laughed.

Your brown muffled words
make no sense. Your coffee
cup spills lies into my
floorboard.

You are limp breathing cadaver,
sporadically yelling, mumbling,
an uncontrollable nothing.
How it is in your nothingness,
your premature death?
Is it as silent as Plath says?
Does my mother greet you
in your comparable pain?
She is not passed out in
the parking lot of Starbucks.
She is buried where the bucks
used to roam.

I shelter my Ibis from you.
She is not weak, though.
She shelters her dog like her
own Ibis. We all shelter ibises
but you.

Your body is a limp disaster,
a floating log in humanity’s
pit.

You lie.
You lie.

I love you when you are
stripped at the bark.

Don’t worry, you’ll soon
die like she did,
a sad Shakespearean
tragedy not quite as
impulsive as two suicidal
lovers. You carve her name
into your stomach like
a neon sign.

How many years has it been
since you spoke to reality?

I don’t blame you. I’d love
to escape from this reality
that you’ve created for us
in your nonreality.

Maybe we’ll meet again
in nonreality together.
Maybe mama will be there,
and maybe she’ll take your
hand and bring you into
a new reality where both
nonfiction and fiction merge,
in ecology’s grave, perhaps.

You lean backwards toward
the edge of the porch like
a falling angel, like the Lord
of Light, perhaps. You sway,
rock-a-bye in a tree top.
You are a dancing, jumping
sheep; you sleep. One foot
backwards and you’ll plunge
into the fiery pit. There is no
Beelzebub by your side.

I am God for now.

I press my finger to your back
as delicately as your hand
on my forehead when I fell
at the indoor playground,
Virginia Beach home,
wound hospital-swelling
and rising like your sins.

You lean toward the door,
toward the entrance to the
haven of nonreality that
you built for yourself.
I grab your key after
copious attempts.

You launch at me.
You are no shuttle,
no vessel.

We are done with guerilla
warfare now, interventions
stacked in the corner like
your old Playboy magazines,
recyclable.

I am Machiavelli; I strategize.
My Scarlet Ibis escapes through
the front door, and I leave
you to your nonreality,

fireplace pissing carbon monoxide.