Oh great bright peach burning
in my throat. You smother
my voice, feed off my breath, turning
and revolting
against me. I would rather
jab a knife and swallow blood
than lie
on my back day after day,
under that mesh mask…
The hood of silence hovers
over me and at last
that blister roasting has melted to pitiful nothing.
Listen,
after all the flesh lost
I am too feeble even for bathing. Clouded
with an ether of the most
basic bodily quest to keep the heart
thumping, thumping, thumping like a sick
hammer inside. The repeating
of its simple report:
How quickly,
how quickly we do go through this life.
Mark Robinson is born and raised in Des Moines, IA and attended the University of Iowa, where he studied Literature and Journalism and started writing poetry in earnest.