Eating Myself

The contemporaries

Grab handfuls of language

And pelt it at canvas. I envy

Their movements

Their fluid enhancements

Yet these fingers are dancing

Over a carcass. I take the bone

Of a sentence, peeling off prose

In its sinewy embers

As if looking

For hope. Did I mention

The glut of the grease

Which I sieve through, sitting under

My nails

 Like an intimate gesture.

I have prepared to fail

Like a special menu.

The picture, first be my heart

Remarkably tender

For it has hardly stirred. The component parts

Glitter, the life in the mirror

Plucked like a lobster

To impress the diner.

I want then to be served

On an extensive platter

Or poured into china – my tongue

And its matter. The talk, talk, talk

Of the trimmings thereafter

Hot in the string

Of individual breaths.

When that is exhausted

I will offer them health

The residual lot

Slow-cooked for flavour

And served by itself.

The cutlery does not match

But I never did either

The jaw bone bent at an angle

With receiving incisors

The eyeballs a special

That turn to you after.

There might be a layer

Of self-pity to puncture

But under, the mildness

Of innocent vision.

I once saw my hand, reaching  into the distance

And bend to a cup

For another cheekbone.

I catch the friction

Of knife or a wristwatch

Guiding me backwards

And wonder if this is the system

The palm which we eat from.