While sitting in Sizizis,
Olympia, Washington, 9/8/12.


You have cultivated your inherited hopelessness, to grow
like a warm knife through your back.

Only bitter tastes register, and love
is revolting.

Love, that sustenance from the
aged basin

is revolting.

Strictly,
you consume the
dust of nutmeg,

to lend a cold and static pulse
momentum,

the cyanogenic pits of peaches,
tepid beer.

You would not like it here,
here where I am sitting.

You would not like the soft,
dark wood, the ceiling

of doorknobs.

It is not unkind,
not fraught with needles,

not a keening night terror.

There is little light
and minimal pain.

There is not room
for you to spread your limbs out wide,

and hate.