food poisoning

Spent all day holding it in

Having meetings over the great corpse

There she was crying in front of me

I had told her this would happen

And when the sun reversed its face

The cool night air was sweeping through my guts

Like a pile of dead leaves and broken glass

And when they slept together in the floor below me

I could hear the howls made to hide the moon.

Two days after, the clouds spoke

And the winter fear of fur glistened on my lips

And the sun slid yellow into my pocket for the year to come.

But now I am rocking back and forth with my hands over my stomach wishing

There was something I could punch

Into a great many hearts the shadows expand

I see them when they pull out their phones and scroll.

And bukowski didn’t quite say it

With his mouth full of cigar smoke behind the curtain

And neither did Eileen with her almost prostitution.

Let me take a try—

We share the fact that we are wounded animals.

Everything can pour out,

I still open my mouth.