I don’t have the stomach for this

                        In this way I’m disemboweled.

Eating from boxes above the cold stove,

Red robes, all ritual removed.

A hundred thousand furnaces

Running on incense and crystal,

The essence stripped, the palace burned.

Choking on swollen tongued gristle,

The accumulation of selves turning to                   

Gossamer: the tumult of soft bodies

Sick in their own way, each their own temple.

We are are own Herostrati.

                        All of us praying for disavowal,

Breathing the same air filled with thick smoke,

Sick with small differences. Roots

Spread through the sick dirt.

A republic of burnt lungs,

Birth charts privileging eternal return

But ending up bloodless and hung.

Begging for hospice before the cold throne,

In white rooms re-reading runes.

            Waking from dreams of a republic of gum

            To find in our sleep we swallowed our tongue.

                        It’s beginning to growl.