To know yourself is to know your disease.
What good company the blue flute to
well-written notes of these veins; how
tenderly practiced its plangent tunes.
If I could shake myself like a dog I would feel
more useful than intelligent. I am tired of finding
dead birds in the garden, limp as oil and still
beautiful. Here's the thing: so you're a bird
and you fall out of a tree. Does it have to break
my heart? The world is filled with predators.
Some of them even attended Harvard. When
you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror,
that telling, smear of dried blood on your lip,
do you ask yourself: what am I?
