Bowlful of Teeth
       

The man who snuck into the garden
soon stood revealed as the brother
I would have drawn unto myself
except that I suffer from a bad upbringing,
or elsewise am a basically shitty person:
the tiger, regardless of the reason, sprung,
as did the poets for hire, singing the dawn,
the winsome spider, the forlorn path
upon which addicts as my brother was
tread until the savage tooth,
according to the whims of their relatives,
swiftly disembowels, thus heavenly delivers them.

Think for a second of your own birth.
Enough. The grass was there before,
and trees, and roads, retailers everlasting.
The sickness that engulfs a seagull colony
resonates more than the tiny psalmistry
you think of as your feelings. You say to yourself,
The world ought to be my home, my home
and that of all my company, but even as
you shape the words, your throat closes up
with the bronchial knowledge of how keenly
every addled friend will turn on you.
Go ahead and try a different pastry.
The shoes you thought about at lunch
are already lined up against your door.

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Copyright © 2012 John Beer All rights reserved
from Conduit
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission