in my poems, a stubbed toe
and its profanities, the wake of the freighter
always at sea, a dictator at gunpoint:
I can be a nasty bastard,
full of yawns and bullets.

I hold back all harm and decay
until it riots, and a little tear gas
enters the poem. From there
the lines weaken and snap,
eloquence starts to wheeze
and the body soon is buried.

What you read is only
a bunch of little pricks
in the fabric where the needle tried
to break glowing skin, and spilled
the opiate all over,
a little hear, a little hair.


� 2004 by John Eivaz