Is this place a constipation camp
Where I am condemned to die
Some small spiritual death along with all the others?
What is keeping me at this vigil?
Gassed by my own thick smoke to die a little?
I choke and know I write and toke
To keep in the rebounding Echo of a feeling
That plays a vague refrain against my lampshaded skin.
Not yet! I am not ready.
One night, wrapped in my guilty quilt, in my room, in my hut
I shall weave a writer's patch upon my ancestral tapestry.
I expect the Echo will return and reek havoc on some other body part -
A lung, my womb, my tongue, my heart -
Come to remind me that in my gut,
Asleep, and unable to escape
Is my genetic baton;
Tame.
I pick up my pen.
I feel afraid in the dark that now glows red
And wonder if the Phoenix also screams
As it flies out from the flame.
