Diagnosis Is Metamorphosis

Flat truths, uttered in the tone of a weather forecast

Or the lunch specials

Are difficult to digest

They seem not to be food at all

But the fossils of an extinct monster

Hard and dry and impervious to the mind's dentition

Solid and obstinate in the throat, hostile to air

They move inside, but grudgingly, inching

Dragged into a body that wants only to pass them

Once they are swallowed, things change

Anger, febrile negotiation, wagers with deaf myths

All must be dealt with in their own time and tongue

Gradually, the system shifts

The contraction of the temporal horizon

Seems violent and dreadful at first

But who wants to prolong a mediocre party?

If your idols are already banquets for maggots

If your most eloquent, impassioned entreaties

Sound like gibberish to your bored, confused neighbors

If love has become a synonym

For a set of fashionable ways to hem the fabric of your life

Into a burdensome, itchy discomfort

And your work reeks of futile, mechanical repetition

Why would you cling?

Know that the world of the sick and fading animal

Is no longer confined to imagination or conjecture

It is your home

You can furnish and decorate it as you like

You can reveal it to others in a kaleidoscope of modalities

Its leaden ugliness, its panting beauty, its brittle precarity

All belong to you now, to be shared or kept secret as you choose

No longer must you speculate or dream or read

About what it might be like to live with busy death

Checking its watch on the elevator to your flat

You are its next appointment

But it has yet to arrive

Crack the egg of trepidation

Christen it with coarse salt and butter the color of afternoon sunlight

Relish its warm shape on your tongue

A bird that will not be

Will give you nourishment enough

To begin writing

As only your mind and fingers can

About how the companionable coffee reminds you

Of a time when it was a steaming enigma

Reserved for those taller than you could hope to be

With urgent tasks orbiting their distracted faces

Keeping them from enjoying a game

That was large enough to cover your heart

Methodically arranging the plastic beasts

And implausibly muscular heroes

For war

In a patch of sunlight

On the rug their gigantic feet ignored

Now it is yours

Like your diagnosis

The first sip may be hot and loud

But you know the second will invigorate

And that your nerves will thrill to the dark kiss of the third

Your life has changed

Shrunk, though it still fits

Everything can belong to someone else

But this is yours alone

Damaged, imperfect, prone to malfunctions

Unique as a retina

Still hungry for impatient light

Which it can still translate

Into an electric chorus

That your wet, grey skull sponge

Will smile and transubstantiate

Into a galaxy of images

Invisible to every, other eye

No blind, unfeeling thing

Not yet

See yourself see