Circle V
Behind these eyes is a furnace
Pressure and persistence;
intensity and aromatics—
they call me Jupiter
because I am the storm
But oh, how cold I have become,
how cynical—
How ‘I love you’ means nothing
And how ‘I am loyal’
means everything and so
I churn, radioactive, a poison
to my own precious kind;
inhale my scarlet fumes
with vigilance because when
they burn they burn forever
And I dig too.
I dig holes.
Not the kind in the dirt,
for bulbs and roots
Nor at the graveyard for the dead,
their dour tombs and crypts
My holes are dug through
my own flesh and blood;
bone and skin
With malice blades and
filthy, inclement fingernails
I will carve myself out—
Artisan, my labor
has left me in peelings
on the floor, caramelized,
but closer to the Earth
is where I want to be
And they try to tell me
what I want is a myth,
that I am in search
of something I will never
reach.
Maybe–
Maybe I am crooked;
maybe I’m deranged
and where they see a rib cage
I see a cell,
where they see a skull
I see a crucible
They say you have to keep breaking your heart to open it.
So break me.
