0.0
It’d been two years since the world went to war.
By “the world went to war,”
I mean two years since rich countries had dangers to account for

The first Columbian guerrillas were talked about
in past tense
months before I was
a future tense.

And the last shots fired
in my mother’s homeland
are barely imaginable.
And my mother’s face
is barely remembered

So talks of spider holes
and grizzled dictators
doesn’t connect with me.
But I dare not turn off the TV.

1.0
Just because the blood is inside you
doesn’t mean it’s where it should be.

Copper in all my meals
Makes me dizzy
Makes it hard to sleep
Tablets after all my meals

In dreams,
suffocation doesn’t make you tired
and there isn’t a ring around your vision
to tell you you’re fading.

1.1
If I had dinner at eight o’clock,
by six in the morning
I’ll be a balmy 28 degrees.

By noon,
I’ll be a warm spring.

By six in the morning
it will be sweater weather.
But my skin is moist
and slick.

1.2
I’d forgotten about my family
and my family about me.
The only thing I am to anyone
is carrion.
And a carrier.

The television speaks about things
that will also double in size
and will also birth flies.
I feed my babies well and undisturbed.
I give them a better life than I had.
And they never have to leave home.

Beelzebub may be the lord,
but I am the surrogate mother.

1.3
The television celebrates the first Makar
and I know the swan on Bingham’s pond
is noticed more than I am,
than I was.

The television plumps and pales
writhes in its wetness
as it discusses the Princess of Wales
and the seven-year fetish.

My plump, pale, and wet babies
writhe until they’re red and hard.
They hatch from their bodies
as they’ve watched the sap of mine
flow forth at my feet.

My swarm depletes me
and a black, humming cloud
evaporates into the gray sky.

Now it is just the two of us.
The pulsating mass
with the pulsing glow
and the incessant noise,
and there is me.

One day, I will satiate you too.

1.4
You speak,
you scream.
I will listen.

The only one of us who could ever move
is the only one of us who never will.

You pulse proudly and excitedly as you smell
a plane crash in the Red Sea,
the Day of Ashura,
186 schoolchildren in Russia.

The skin of my face dries and stretches my lips across my teeth.
The corners of my mouth, from cheek to cheek,
as I think of the day that you’ll smell me too.

"Are you alive?"

I guess you could say that with a little bit of certainty
But flashes behind the eyes don't extend the courtesy
To thoughts that AGTC is just C++ a TAG
And we unequivocally agree
That we can't foresee
A time when it matters at all
Whether every sensory call
Is coming from inside the house
Our is a strenuous bout
Of reducing a wholes to an essences
And making meaning out of what coalesces 

Maybe the important thing to know before I leave
Is that an illusion is a dance between
A magician, artistry,
And suspension of disbelief