Metempsychosis

Allergy is a modern
Plague. We've come to
Reject our environment, the
Same as it's rejecting
Us. Take your five
senses and invert them;
Begin with taste and
Smell until they saturate
Your new impoverished sexuality,
Sinking through embedded texts.
Sickness arrives in Ceylon
In a launder-faded dress,
Assuring you otherwise with
Her perfumed manifesto, a
Steamed narcotic envelope that
Hides a woman's reality,
When she mistakenly waves
At the deceptively familiar
Figure in the crowd,
Realizes the horror of
Being buried alive in
Her own backyard, feels
The stinging folly of
Wanting to spare the
Necessity of evolutionary pain,
Searches fruitlessly through silly
And serious headlines in
A soggy newspaper, the
Ink spidering away from
The heart, oscillating between
Synapses in the slowest
Game of call and
Response, pausing at the
Chance of a meal.
Enameled embarrassment wrapped and
Sewn in newspaper drippings,
A funeral's dead opposite
Gives a moving speech,
Hands tracing, memorizing the
Sadness of a face,
Foreheads touching, more intimate
Than the kiss goodbye
Bringing the beginning of
A colder new year.