CM Clark

Homeopathic Medicine

or The Hair of the Dog

Inoculate me, cow pox creeping, chewing the cud
Plowed under, dazzling
Cells white, awaking clay soldiers at sundown in combat.
Whole battles, hundred-year wars waged within bloodgroups.
Ritual knives circumcise stormwinds, neutralized
Choirs of eunuchs lisping hallelujah!
Replicated in plasma.

The lipsynching gusts leftover belch shock,
Bleat metals airborne
Angling nicked cuts like razorburn
Blood lost to bleed, not kill
Fire licking shins' thin skin
For days until the fade breeds, brings
Immunity.

Belabored breath emblazoned builds antibodies
Bodies to ground, infiltrating marrow.
Tomorrow the quickfever cools.
Just a little taste of decay downed daily, a dollop
Drills the bitter buds at tongue's back
Realigning the scoliotic spine, the days
Unborn unfolding.
I will pace the wasted pavement
Clouded with coffindust clinging to cuffs
And dissolved in pools of black after-rain.
Just a hypodermic prick of horror, quick coursing
Quiets the laughable vulnerability.
I convalesce in secret
Secreted along post-operative corridors,
Sludge loosened from green walls' just-relinquished
Clutch.
Stenciled sequences of ignite and accelerate
Smear to stop.
A tinny wind in the muggy morning.
There is no vaccination for life.

Confessions of a Gutter Snipe

The mist carries gull droppings
carries the stampede of nasal scree.
Typical Pacific. The land lies slouching
back bumps on Cascade’s callous.
The three longest toes rubbing the seventy piers.
The blood blisters, trigger-fingers nicotine stained.
I will lay myself down in a sidestreet
westbound with the oil-fish sun, slicked,
hidden by puddling towers
shadows worried by moody blue afternoon.
Soon
just before the time changes
and it’s earlier. Or later than before,
than ever,
just before cloud-break and rainbow-bend,
I’ll plunge, Seattle-style. And the settling in
a whole half
hour dreamfree,
when you’ll lay me down, your ear
scanning my skin for pulse
with your footpressed thumbscrew
ground in grounds.
I pant with the wait
on the curb, panhandling clear sky and loose change.
I play to slay or be slain, until
the coffee breaks, my eyes
inverse mirrors of thirst
unscratchable itch.
We are both conspirators in this,
exiled, wandering wills careening with sundown
upwind’s whim.
I give you up for lost beyond my blind knife’s blunt edge
at last lost in San Juan’s island swill
lost rim-shelf’s hills sinking
lost whales warbling offshore
intent on the long-lost longboat passage north by northwest
savagely surrender-stained, hard-pressed
the uncountable cost, trashcans smoldering
the fading fire
the lost last chance for dilapidated bliss
the lost empire of constant rain.

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© 2005 by CM Clark