X-Ray Prophets

 X-Ray Prophets

 

These days, you need a machete—

Crocodile Dundee big—

to hack a vein through this jungle of dark.

How does anyone sleep?

Once, young and feral,

I could sleep through thunder,

through houses collapsing in dreams.

Now arthritis tolls its iron bell;

pain sits on the porch with a shotgun.

I turn and turn,

a stranded animal nosing the brush

for one patch of moss,

one warm stone of bliss

inside the swamp-thick doubt

that anything changes.

Maybe it does.

But when strangers climb into my skull

with flashlights and weather maps,

I leave.

No shelter from X-ray prophets

mistaking roots for bones,

blind to the green fire

rising beneath the soil.

The phone hums in my hand

like a tagged hornet.

The zombies know our names,

know the shape of our hunger.

Still, sight is a prescription bottle

with half the label scratched away;

speech, a window breathing itself opaque.

Trust half of seeing,

none of the static.

Believe in a cracked lantern

swinging through rain.

The crow, stitched to the power line.

The thorn, working deeper under the skin.

Pennies dissolving on the tongue

like blood and electricity.

Or the smoke of

black orchids opening

where the dark learns to flower.