It’s weird to be a flower made of meat.

A really red carnation. People smile.

They like the idea of someone crouched over the barrel of my youth.

They like when I eat a chicken leg.

They chuckle at the occasion of meat eating meat.

At home the ghosts aren’t as frank but the way they look at me,

I know they are thinking that’s MEAT.

The hungriest ghost I know lives in the drain.

He is skinny but fat around the middle

a quietly seeking gaze in wet darkness.

I look deeply down to him and whisper

I’m hungry too. Nothing. That’s the thing.

It’s the song of a bit of food walking around

with an appetite.

The universe is a creep

don’t you THINK!!!!

A cool white planet in the distance.

I have been told that I should drink

or fall in love to write poetry

and I have peed on the street.

This is nothing like a drug portal to poetry.

My druggy self was fat and mute.

The camera was rolling but all that footage lived underground.

It is the voice in my head

the oldest voice.

She calls me up and I sit patiently

with a grey flame in my eye.

And angry I guess. I ghost.

Like I have a little shit in my mouth.

There’s a tendency toward scorn

in my family that I have to temper in myself.

I have to soften the trigger

which is lurid as my mother.

Even at the stoplight as I’m gazing.

I HAVE TO KEEP WRITING. LOOK AT THAT ANGRY PIECE OF MEAT. A MAN POINTS. YOUR MOUTH IS LIKE A MOVIE THEATER HE ADDS. I’M WALKING DOWN THE STREET. CHICKEN LEG IN A PINAFORE. THE WORLD CREAKS. SOMEONE’S REACHING IN MY MOUTH, A TOTAL STRANGER. YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’LL DIE AND THAT’S THE JOKE. THAT’S WHAT SUICIDE IS, SOMEONE IS SHOUTING THE PUNCH LINE FIRST. Only there’s no shout, just a hole, other people talking. One day I’ll wake up and the universe will know. Men will know. God will. The world will creak and my brain will empty its colors into the air.

It will be morning. Is there a perfect time to die?

It won’t be the perfect time. I’ll die. 

FRANCES