This is what the lack of pills does to me.

Swollen with useless potential
from my lips
straight through the top of my backbone,
I wake up hungry, wanting something,
something like whipped cream on a steak.

This is how it works.

Novels appear in sand
piled up in the gutters after a deadly winter.
The brass eagle on the flagpole can smell me,
mouselike, ready to roar at slights
not intended for me.  There’s a moon
in my waistband and wait for tides
to storm me erect.  I soften for seconds
at a time, then imagine the bread of past flesh.

This is the beginning of knowing.

The skull contains.  The mouth
releases.  The ears wash over with dimunition
of words important to speech, matterless truth,
illusory tinkling of breaking, reforming.
Nostrils, ultimately untwinned, pull in the idea
of opposites and return them damp and salty.

This, a full knowing.

There are required distances splintered into steps
that sink and fluff back once the feet are lifted.
There is an end in sight, scirocco mirage,
blend of stolen bones on grit wings.

There is night when moon is not enough.
A taste in the mouth that was never desired,
no matter how I once wished for it.