of me are
flaking
off
every
day
in shreds
and mangles
that peel – that
I peel –
off the soles of my feet
or in fat cigarillos of
pasty human silt
that scratch from
neck and
shoulders and
everywhere else.
and these
things
which were once me
are not me any longer
are things.
I make a drama of it
too – menacing
hard dead calluses
with sharp steel
provoking sometimes red
red corroboration
that great theatric
and these are the colors
of a body, white and
grey and dry and dripping and
telescoping out in awkward posts and
dead and living and
peeling
itself
apart –
it’s a bad habit.
December 7, 2023