PlanCut It Out
To pretend is old print alley.
He took my voice
not just the noise, he was good at it,
I had no choice.
Madness is never a vacuum that fills the void:
he shoved me into a room of snakes
pushed me into a fear of uncharted characters
carelessly cutting me to pieces.
I dealt with the new monster a bit of me at a time,
If I were whole I could have gotten somewhere —
out of there.
Embedded my DNA are shreds: bits of fingers the flesh skinned from my thighs
ward in defense, loosely hinged brain parts flop slime to the front line,
another roadside kill to him.
Whatever the morph I screamed with it, whatever it had become. There is no silence as loud as this, no chain of memory or unfiltered conjure.
I thought I knew the depth of death, wizened macabre; old-hat gory-hole.
Now I see it clear from knee’s length my new posture.
It is not magic but sad buffers like grandma’s collections after she died.
The bits and ends lack intel to back. So I sit: some of me here, some there. There is not enough to name an ass. I cannot lean or bend or turn,
up and down is broken glass.
And yet he lives …
Michael Stang 2019
