10,000 backlit ventricles

10,000 backlit ventricles
sputter blood around,
messing up this main vestibule.
5,000 of those plugs are mine
the other half belong
to my favorite protagonist:
old lovers & their old lovers too
things I needn't mention but do
in my poems
& on the tops of my hands
into which I've been carving.
They've scabbed over
& hopefully won't scar.
I've been learning
to define things differently:
Bed sheet = insomnia
Coffee = insomnia
Phone call = insomnia
etc. etc. = insomnia
See how that works?
This dysfunctional delicacy
I display, on a highly involved,
yet strictly perfunctory level.
Yada yada yada blah blah blah
& circular hand motions
are my dialogue's main
diagram when I gibber jabber
"Oh, I haven't slept in six weeks..."
"Oh! I haven't slept in seven!"
I'm infinitely more desperate than you!
Motherfucker!
I'm turning cosmopolitan.

Jason Jensen