POEM

I’m like a worm moving about
underneath your feet.
What kind of Life is this?

Solitude! Great Solitude!
I could wear upon my head of woe
the wig of King Louis XVI,

or Washington when he would initially think
a deep thoughtful thought,
like a mind glowing;

a wig, then, with a kind of powdered pompousness,
but not like so: more-so like
that of a wig holding in the electricity of the mind:

an upbeat illumination seen only by an Imagination
full of twisted tentacles
as if rung-out like a sloppy, soaked mop.

I’m preserving the hiding places of my longing,
keeping the briar-covered meadows
as an emblem of the inevitable,

the way that “death is hidden in clocks”—
the gravity of a heart that drops
into the stomach, hurrying slowly,

as if as an anchor;
a dead-red crab’s pinching claws;
a bluish wandering narrative:

a language of snow. I'm a living carcass
but I still love you.