Ad Hominem

The Poet:

Fugitive lung, prodigal intestine—

where’s the pink crimp in my side

where they took you out?

The Octopus:

It must be a dull world, indeed,

where everything appears

to be a version or extrapolation

of you.

The birds are you.

The springtime is you.

Snails, hurricanes, saddles, elevators—

everything becomes

you.

I, with a shift

of my skin, divest my self

to become the rock

that shadows it.

Think of when

your reading eyes momentarily drift,

and in that instant

you see the maddening swarm of alien ciphers submerged within the text

gone before you can focus.

That’s me.

Or your dozing revelation

on the subway that you are

slowly being

digested. Me again.

I am the fever dream

in which you see your loved ones

as executioners. I am also their axe.

Friend, while you’re exhausting

the end of a day

with your sad approximations,

I’m a mile deep

in the earth, vamping

my most flawless impression

of the abyss

to the wild applause of eels.
-N.B.