Hernia

Help me, I've fallen

into the pit of mortality,

the rot of the body,

the ruins of a being

I no longer

recognize.

I'd be happier, freer

as a Paramecium in

a Petri dish.

If only my skin

was a cocoon,

I'd wriggle out

into a new form,

not butterfly-beautiful.

I'd settle for mosquito

or amoeba.

Everything is enemy,

the sky, my work,

my memories

infest my hippocampus

like determined termites

burrowing into knotty pine.

Heaven is closed

and so is my colon.

Open, Sesame, please,

deliver me to dreams,

from nights of fearful,

fitful sleep.

I make my own music,

bark hard syllables

from mouth to feet,

a kick, a plead,

a cry over the commode.

My sphincter's frozen,

my bowel's busted,

my urinary tract's backed up.

I'm sick of being in pieces,

a cesspool of yellow and feces,

waking up five times a night

while the Moon limps along

like a broken hobo under

coffee stained clouds

and the wind blows sand and pebbles,

polluted music, across silvered stones.

I pray: Poke me, probe me, prod me.

I'll denounce beauty if need be.

Turn me hideous or Homo Habilis,

return me to some semblance

of what I was. I'll do anything

to live life again and pee freely

like an unobstructed

garden hose.