Psycho Reflex

black blood     the rancid shit    comes from deep deep in the bowel    that’s a sign      a deadly sign     of cancerous infestation    some vicious invader eating at my guts     that’s slow death      death by maggots    incremental      relentless

I know from the pathology     I’m in the balance     I only have ounces     left to live     but don’t we all?      we fend off creeping rot      with lacerated hands      and shrieks of denial      not now      please not now     but if not now     when?

my gut is home      to numerous infestations       and inchoate hunches    I feel things with my gut       the way you might feel with your fingertips      or your love pump       my worms have tendrils everywhere    they think they call the shots     I can ignore      their more extreme     fear fuelled  demands       until they lay on the brain pulse      and cripple my membrane     with the hurt   

they force me into     drastic actions     which will inevitably     lead to humiliation       such is the frailty of human nature        we are often in the squishy dark       groping blindly     for comprehension      in the shit and slime      thinking with the gut    not with the mind

my skull is packed with stained sheets     and rare botanical exhibits of stolen graveside flowers       taught to help myself     but not too much      I flounder now on the shores of dementia      my public decomposition     and damaged precocity       have burgeoned to insane dimensions

I have become a spectacle      for leering jaws and wagging tongues     I’m making manic      with the sorry classicists     who bought me dinner     and stole my luggage      they share their condolences       as they rifle my drawers     I stand subordinate to my monomania       awkward in my anaemic droplets    frantically attempting regeneration       through my psycho reflex