A Second Eulogy

You've nearly done it. You look 

Almost identical. So close to the rank 

Of replica, my specter, growing solid. 

Are you a clone? Coy, ripe with fractures. 

There is something askew, though. A 

Single cell of your mosaic removed.

You are different.

Imagine, I paid you a courtesy. I interred,

And you couldn’t hold firm the form of

The split shell that sticks to

The innards of my lids. Nothing is

Sacred. No, not even six feet of funerary dirt.

I am intrigued; that two years could

Glaze you to an antique. Cracked,

Embellished with golden Africana. A wetted

Porcelain, tilting with attic attribute.

It is when I think that I link the

Line to an obtuse hook that rips

Off the false patina. There’s the proof.

Me, the necromancer.

And yet I am doubted: my alacrity to 

Spoil myself rotten, with handfuls of harms. It is

So easy; to stimulate the resurrection. There

Is no recipe; hollows jar-jammed,

Earth birth boiling, anthology. Why  

Would I require these? – A trigger? 

Please, elaborate. What do you

Mean?

I thought I had made myself clear

That I’ve capacity. 

I told them. I told them all. Now

Look at what leans adjacent, away from

Me, white and gelid as the arctic constant.

And demands the contents 

Of my peach sleeve in their entirety.

It is hardly grueling,

This perfected poignant praxis. A failing,

Fooling every pillar in me to puddles.

And that thudding, throbbing juggernaut 

That crushes my judgment so sweetly. 

God do I do it well.

It is the gelatinous texture of it, the thickened

Recollection that I probe. Do you not see

That I touched you? I should amputate.

But instead I print this second eulogy with

The glitter gone gray –

A name? What do you need of my 

Name? It was Tantalus that night, 

Steeped in a sentiment aquatic. Face 

Beat by spray I took

My own bait. I granted your dead, 

Dead eyes to dine on mine.

  

What a marvel, what a séance. Watch me,

Watch me, academia, as I defy.

Ghoulish wheat, spiking through the loam.

Feigning the martyr, you do not deserve

A prize. What am I to gain from your silvered

Scarecrow but another fissure. What repaired
Lobe are you now dying to colonize?  

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH

Medicated

Each day, near seven, I 
Crash. I plummet like a fork,
A gargantua robed in brass and
Bone. The trail is black, I do not
Know of a home. 

So I hit the plastic sea with a scowl.
My velocity, a handicap as

I sink, I sink; not a thousand but a 
Billion leagues down, to the room where
I can do nothing. Nothing but think.

I am sick to death of chemicals. 
Ovoid vectors tinkling down the 
Chimney of my throat. I can hardly 
Stand to lift my mitt to deposit - is

This my hand? No, a mechanic’s

Sweat pearls. They cause this

Diagonal landing, a

Warranty to dive deeper each time.
They hurt me when I hit. Which came
First? They hurt me but they bless.

Symbiosis in a mangled dress.

© 2014 BENJAMIN SMITH