beetles

 

hospital days are hushed and sterile      but the nights are mine alone        these sanitised corridors are bleached for deadly purpose       people come here to die     I’d bargain for salvation     …but who in hell with?     I was never born to make these deals      how do you bargain for your life?       I’ll be happy dodging between the locked wards       keeping a low profile        maybe they’ll forget about me       down in the basement      in the soul food abattoir       where the surgeons cut and paste appendages 

I‘m stalking the deathwatch beetles        that are gnawing on my bones     …the things we draw to ourselves       can be our undoing     I burn sixty coffin nails a day     cancerous nicotine stains my fingers     my world is sepia toned     spoiled milk  and   dead flowers      he who lives by the sword…     …but forget that now      I don’t want to think about that       coz I died there on the pillow      I died a thousand times       while a host of ravenous beetles      devoured me from inside