It’s not all soft silks and
nintendo chirps,
sometimes the knife is heavy and sharp
and it slips from your grip,
slices open the webbing ‘tween thumb
and forefinger.
Sonuvabitch!
There’s blood all over the cabbage patch now,
and this too is living –
this too is worthy of song,
men have shed blood for silly mistakes
and stupid jobs,
axes swung askance have struck feet,
spinning gears have crunched arms
have skinned and unsocketed whole hands
whole lives-
poets and philosophers have contemplated
and come to wrong conclusions,
have drunkenly scrawled mixed metaphors –
but they keep their blood,
they keep their limbs,
their fingers,
their lives.
Treat A Body Badly
