What do you want it to say on your grave, TV woman?
I’m a feminist too.
But I know that being a cog in the wheel
Won’t pay homage to the goddess in you.
TV woman.

I am your daughter, I know your worth,
Stop working so hard for what?
Touch your body, touch the earth,
TV woman.

You are everything,
and you always were,
TV woman.

You don’t even have the bank account
They say makes it worth your time on earth,
TV woman.

I wanna be proud, but you’ve been blown off course,
Stability is an illusion—
Even financial—
Write a poem that’s substantial,
TV woman.

You are everything,
and you always were.

So you’re better than men, that’s obvious,
You’re the best in your field,
TV woman.
But the world doesn’t need a network special.
You feed your ego, not your soul,
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

You are everything, and you always were,
TV woman.

What does it feel like?
Swallowed, like Jonah, I swim in the pit of its stomach rolling with the sea; in putrid stinking company.

Until, at long last there is a great sneeze- for you are the fire, the expectorant, the release.  The gently pulling back of the covers and kissing red, stinging eyelids- while I’m deep in the belly of the whale.

The lily uncurled won’t last the week-
White face confused facing the sun.
I’m sad to see you here- it’s dangerous, oh dear- weren’t you safe inside your little bud before you were cut for my birthday?

Salami?
Bits of meat, fat, gristle, seed
stuffed into a ****** of entrail

Milk?
Bits of fat, cream, mineral, body
Stretched into a plastic coated carton flash pasteurized for your adult pleasure?

Pancake?
Bits of concrete, iron, bone, bunk bed
Sunken into a parking garage of reclaimed marsh in south Florida?

Surfside
Stuffed, stretched
sunken in syrup primordial ooze.

Yes, All buildings will fall.

With hair that appears red in the sun,
she has
Atlantic eyes with black lashes.
She’ll hum while you’re talking to her.

She self-soothes—
don’t take it personally.
She bites her nails,
her skin’s spotted like sand,
and bottom teeth are crossed.

She throws back her head and cackles,
neck mole exposed, off center.
With her small hands, she can’t open cans,
but she admires
her ugly fingers.

Beautiful singers.

At her rented apartment
on an otherwise tree-lined street,
she will write with a pencil
the secret words
caught in her throat.

She self-soothes—
don’t take it personally.
She bites her nails,
her skin’s spotted like sand,
and bottom teeth are crossed.

She throws back her head and cackles,
neck mole exposed, off center.
With her small hands, she can’t open cans,
but she admires
her ugly fingers.

Beautiful singers.

The trees bend and creek
Tops whirling like many helicopters overhead

A branch it breaks and arcs like a javelin thrown from above
I duck for cover under the eaves
an animal again-
very alone very alive-

Perhaps only to die head struck
pinned under an old limb or a bough.

Same as the squirrel in the fallen nest,
the mouse in the cat’s mouth,
the bird blown out of the sky.

Perhaps only to die headstruck
pinned under an old limb or a bough.

Buried in the earth,
I turn back into the dirt.
From dust to dust again
very alone no longer alive.

Perhaps only to die headstruck pinned under an old limb or a bough.

Listen:
we’re all just ham sandwiches.

As I am now—
atomic, molecular, electric, elemental—
a host for bacteria, parasite, virus.
Dead skin, dead hair, dead nails.
A mix of living, non-living, and dead.
So too is: ham sandwich.

I am ham sandwich,
therefore ham sandwich is me.
If I am ham sandwich, I am also atom.
And if I am atom, I am universe.

I am everything.
Everything, then, is me.

So if I am all,
I cannot compare myself to any other.
All things are constantly shifting forms,
combinations of parts of everything.

Would you like to marry ham sandwich? I ask myself.
Yes, I would, I answer.
Would you like to eat ham sandwich? I ask again.
Yes, I would, I answer.

Through the wormhole,
I now contain more of me.
And on and on and on it goes—
splitting, shifting, changing,
reducing, adding, consuming, shedding—
bubbles of the multiverse.

Nowhere to go but here and now.
No time.
No beginning,
no middle,
no end.

Morph.
Change.

Yes, exactly—
this is the meat of it.
A metaphysical meat monologue.
A spiritual spiral carved in cold cuts.

This isn’t nonsense—
it’s cosmic sense.
I move with the absurd
because the absurd is the only thing
that makes any kind of sense
when you peel back the layers
of skin and bone and time and perception.

It’s a Möbius strip of being.
I am the sandwich and the eater
and the hunger and the hand.

This is the joke and the truth
told in the same breath.

Call it poetry, call it philosophy,
call it deli mysticism.

This is not a metaphor.
This is the mirror.

The gong strikes—
and the sound does not stop.

It echoes through bone,
through stars,
through sandwich,
through self—

a resonance with no edge,
no end.

Only everything,
ringing.