folks argue if you know how to feel pain,
if the will for suffering is held in
the spirit or
the brain,
if a brain can be a net, crude cut axons
woven on a sheet of strange seaborn meat.
if the roil of some conflagration can harm you but not hurt you, does it even matter?

“it’s so hard to be puppy,”
we say when she won’t stop biting and has to go down for a nap,
and she screams like hammers and nails and crab claw crackers until sleep steals indignation away.

can i weep? is the sound of me neuron-driven or just
air being squeezed out of my bright-red, cooking skeleton?