billy 3

Billy injected himself
with household cleaners the other day.
said it was how he could tell stories,
how poems would source from within.

indeed he is telling stories now,

convulsive stories, bedside tales
contorted
ecstatic
recalling much of our boyhood.

strange people enter the room
wanting to drink Billy’s piss.
I would let them, but Billy tells me no.

the tales they seek
are not the tales of the poet
he says,
not the proper tales
of the spasmodic and shivered.

as I watch him
his froth reminds me
of the time we sniffed glue.

Of the time we first discovered poetry.


                                                                                                    return to totem poems