Matter of Flower

I strip the fiend references from the poem because they bore me. Then I look hard at my friend---her big grin, the gums which leak blood. Her eyes are silky as buds. We are outside the village when she sighs and returns her eyes to my palm.

She says, "I came to you after diseases lifted their clammy arms..."

I mumble, Matter of flower. I feel perfectly ill. My tongue flutters as I try to hide it. We sink as we walk, our skeletons' rocking like boats over the soft earth, the island at the bottom of the sewer, soiled & glistening. Our tropical acre, smeared with guava.

There are no rocks, only crumbled mortar. Worn as her teeth.

She wanders, looking for new icy drinks or places to sleep. I open my book on bone diseases, and read as I walk. Osteitis. Bone inflammation. Today, I'm wearing my white nurse's uniform, and carrying my purse of blood. It's snapped shut.

Osteoclasia. Surgical breaking of a bone to correct a deformity.

She stumbles into the castle.

I follow her down a long yellow hall, passing a junkie and a black and white television set. He's watching 'Dynasty', taking notes so he'll remember the plot.

I tell myself that this castle is large enough for all of my friends, each friend representing an aesthetic choice which can be summed up in a word: Jane. A person with no outline, or even any clothes.

(Jane is missing, she may have melted into the syrups.)

Osteomalacia. Softening of the bones.

When I turn the corner, my friend has disappeared, but a group of unusual creatures is waiting there. Their cauliflower brains swivel on elegant stems, radiant green lights reflect in their eyes. After I pass, I hear them stripping and eating the flowers and fruits that hang just outside the castle windows.

I read aloud as I walk, words mingling with ripples of music.

Osteomyelitis. The surgeon cuts out dead, infected bone, so that fresh bone can grow.

I find my friend, crouched in a doorway. I put my ridiculous hand in her tiny one. She sighs. She says, "Something is growing bigger inside me. Probably alcoholism." I touch her with the velvet petal of my tongue.

byebye U know who U R