Ghost Light NY

How long until I am gone?

How long until all the parts:

Twitching limbs, silent neurons

Return to the warm worm soil?

Until the breath of my name

Flutters its last, cold nothing,

Quantum bubble bursting, quiet.

And I can stop wondering.

Was I good? I’d wonder this

As maggots crawl from my eyes.

Will my hormones, and carbon webs,

And lipid strings, bear me forth?

Was I good? When despair tore

Itself, screaming from my throat?

All the world spinning away.

Hot and cold and sickly, tired

Of the pounding in my skull.

Was I good enough? Suffering,

All I’ve known. Boring, empty

but for the adjectives

I learned to plead with, beg with

Belly up like a starving mutt.

Good boy, good boy. Tail wagging.

Flies buzzing. Kicked in the ribs.

Was I good enough for your scraps?

Or will I go back to the dump?

And scrounge through the unwanted trash,

And tear grey chunks from my own corpse.

Wonder at my burning belly.

Marvel at it. The fear I feel.

Parasites for company now.

And pray it’s an older friend,

My first and last friend. Bright red.

And the blood comes up. Too much

Jagged scratches and white bone

Rotting from the inside out.

And I lay down. Was I good?

Curled up with my skeleton

Grass and weeds suckle from me.

Was I good? When I gave up?

And returned my atoms back?

I wonder this, now I am gone.

And rage is all that is left.

And an empty space where my life

should have been. Love should have been.