Unzipped Grief

If my body is a temple,
I’d like to visit somewhere else.
Knives and doctors’ paper masks
have shaded legs I cannot use.
Tragic slyly shuffles cards.
Bad draw operations sting.
A cruddy analogy for art,
but just the same as polar bears
that step on brittle fortune cookies—
undeserved no matter crumbs.

Storms have weathered autumn leaves
and parchment wings of wounded doves.
Passion’s pancreatic juices
flow when hope and faith do not.
There ought to be some limit marks
to suffer’s lines on measured glass.
Poetics is a praying mantis
after every bug in sight.
A paper clip I bend and stretch,
until its snap and drop contends.

The mystic quantity of “enough is enough
is enough is enough” comes crawling out
like roaches from behind the fridge.
Catharsis is, well, bait
beneath the kitchen sink.
I put crisis in a pile;
clothespin all these dirty sheets.
Pass their crusty curses fast
before you see potato lumps.
When you unzip this grief and feel,
then I have won with paper cuts.
A bent Quixote windmill blade,
I live with cold admission’s mud.

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