The woman, babbling
to her bag on the bus.
First about the brain, then about
murder.
When she leaves, two
Funko Pop citizens, dressed
in graphic tees that quip at you,
pass each other glances,
lap up each other's smugness.
Well, I have a message
for that woman:

They will never get rid of us.

I am not
ridiculous.
I take my meds, I
contort my limbs
the ways I must.
But now, I'm asked to take my arms
clean off.
I am not mild-mannered, white-furred,
able to appear as anything less than mangy
at heart.
I am not softly, profitably
expressive.
My kind, we leave a raw
impression.

And this time, I'll gnash you
for ten more stitches.
In my diseased state, these teeth
kill.
And I am getting
sicker.
Of my own design,
I do not know.
If I could avert this,
part of me would not.

I am not asking
for pity.
I am not praying.
I am pummeling the dirt, begging
for this world to breathe as I do.
I am screaming to be found, because
why create such fragile life?

If you see a light,
follow it
onto the ice.
I've already stepped, crackling toward
this blotched orb, burgundy ink, set and gurgling
in the air.
I think I am meant to leap
for the ink.
And then I am meant to plunge
under the ice, into
the lake.

We pretend to love
the especially ill.
God's children live in the wards, the institutions,
the streets.
Hide-covered, locust-munching,
prophets and baptizers forerunning
this red sun, set and blazed
upon wax Zion.
I am thinking of their minds, blackened and spun.
I am nearly one of them.

A man rushes onto the bus, cradling
a frozen chicken.
Pupils tugging at his skull, he flares and sparks
looking for his assailants.
Then our eyes meet, and a small
calm
enters and leaves the both of us.
Like the brief retreat
of an insatiable flame.