This is my pain these days:
sores all over like busy little insects
lodged just beneath my skin.
My recent brush with nature
bit me to pieces itchy and aching.
I was food, a convenient feast.
But really, I am only a shell.
A moth being carried with freedom
by a mob of ants forward right
up the leg of a chair headed for
a likely colony behind the wall,
where the queen, a god in the brink
of destruction, awaits an offering.
Then they all grow wings, organize,
and with premeditation, simultaneously
attack the lamp outside the church.
And after a few minutes, fall dead
one by one out of sheer exhaustion
or become food, wings aflutter on the jaws
of an army of lizards that live there.
This is my pain these days:
the world goes on as busy little insects
make a home just beneath my skin.
