Idiot

Slurring is a blurring between the lips.

Moloch becomes mollusk
and skin,
sinking.
There were words I could once

fill a mouth with.
I don't want to tell you

about the things that I've been
buying, burying,

wrapped in paper, sealed in wax,

delicate as gum disease.

(My jaw pauses to pronounce a pain,

aphasia, asphyxia.)
Exhaustion
only prolongs the problem

of enunciation -
symbols, shells,

softening in saliva

to indecipherable.

I don't want it to seem

like I am mourning the warnings I forgot,

despite those pieces of skin I sucked on

dead weight, dead white,

Idioms rooting themselves in organs,

splitting muscle for a second.

They heal, close over themselves

as if fast forwarded.

It is then that I feel

the symptom of the sentence,

egg it on, dare it.

---
(k, circa 2005)