Reading the Journal of Amphibious Species, only to discover I am
Not one of them. This is my wall, my wailing wall full of secret notes
To the dead who cull me to sleep in two spheres at once.

And so I post here: “present” with prehensile toes.
Knowing all the anonymous loves of a forgotten self
In a well-studied life of vain wield all the actual power.

They are the underbelly of the undercurrent,
The unruly ones that consume and dissuade.
It is lonely at times. All this power and its outage of self.

But I have my sippy cup hanging from a cage
By a loose noose along with a teet of a pen.
Oh dull and droll, surrogate companion.

I am married to my poem, what aches it into being,
Its primal grunt, its prominent forebearer of pain.
The ruckus of a bed made only to lie in it.

And I lie before I die. Oh, how I lie. Lie how I love you.
Truly loved what was there on my ration at the time.
Sang mantra all the while to revive what was already dead.

For I bled on my bed. A cleansing to lie for I had been so good,
So long enough. Inscribed in a petroglyphed cave of unlit past
Barbarian invasions. Everywhere there were signs, though none wished true.