Song of a Grieving Achilles

they’re rubbing Patroclus’ ashes in my wounds like salt

the ropes around my wrists

the menthol in the back of my throat

the black, bacteria-filled bits between the bricks

where does it stop, where does it END?

I’ve got you here, in the back of a black truck trapped

trapped in your body, trapped in your eyes, heart open, eyeballs ajar

they pulled off insect wings and kept them in jars

this one labeled wars, this one closed borders, this one prison system

FUCKTHEPRISONINDUSTRIALCOMPLEX

I said with eyes bright who are the women on the street

they drove a black limousine 

they wanked on the pavement

Rousseau drove his car backward booty out mooning

all the girls in long ballgowns coming out of the opera

and laughing

they put my hands against one of the boards—do you remember?

from the doctor’s office when we were kids

put your hands against it it senses warmth

makes a big green handprint—do you remember?

waiting for your dad to get out of the psychiatrist’s office

waiting waiting trying not to hear anything

making art that fades away in another couple seconds

but that’s what’s incredible—it’s there—and then—it’s not

I put my arms around her shoulder and rolled a cigarette

and burned her thigh in little circles

I remember watching them get infected

and putting fly wings in them

and then the skin healed

OVER

the wounds and then she had fly-skin

and now I broke all their jars and they’re cutting me with the shards

they’re tinged in yellow insect blood and bright red mosquito blots

and they push my hands over and over again down on spiders

so I feel the awful crunch

of the life leaving their bodies

sickening and vomiting everything I didn’t eat

vomiting up my stomach lining and my organs one by one

until I’m a sack of skin clinging to bones and they use the bones

to carve out the bacteria-ridden blackness between the bricks

and I see you and your cigarette and your bow and your laugh

and I weep for you, Patroclus.