My next goal is to eat my way out of this darkness that has swallowed me.

After that I want to eat the soul of the President
once I’ve established a stable residence
as I know how long and how tough a job it will be
to convert that thing into fuel and waste and memory.

It won’t be a good memory
but someone has to do that for the good of the state.
I think I have been chosen for that, for I understand the words
that keep appearing on the flag behind his head:

MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN

abbreviated for the convenience of the moment
and as a way to control the gag reflex:

#MMTU

It’s a lot of weight to carry in my mouth: chewing, chewing for days on end.
No one said it would be easy or quick or appetizing, of course.

After I’ve done my gross digestion, my next goal
will to find gainful employment as a dark muse 
for someone equally constrained by the history of their appetites.

We have to stick together.  
It wasn’t our choice to eat the souls of monsters
and foolish greed-dogs, to save the rest of you
the chore of small-bite revolution.

After I’ve done that we will band together 
into a guild of songsters with worn out teeth and bowels
singing cracked and painful arias about urgency
and the sound of those political bones
in our teeth. We’re only doing it to exhort you
to help us. There are so many of those tough souls
to be eaten. Maybe a rousing chorus will help you choose,
won’t you sing with us, sing along,

MENE
MENE
TEKEL 
UPHARSIN
#MMTU

I have eaten the damn President’s soul
It was heavy but not heavy enough
to keep me from that task
But the flag keeps waving
and the words the words keep coming up

If the whole kingdom must be consumed
you will have to open wide
we will have to open wide side by side

MENE 
MENE 
TEKEL 
UPHARSIN

#MMTU

This dissection of the body politic.

This level of disease being revealed.

This opening along natural seams.

This observation of
burst vessels
open sores
mottled skin 
jaundice
desiccated gums
and lesions.

All routine. All
as expected.

What surprises us, then:

not so much what we find,
but that we find it

here

when we’ve been told that
inside

we are made of, not organs
and blood,
but
sweet light.

With everything turned off in the house
the only sounds are the knocking of the furnace
now and then, occasional scrabbling in the walls from
invader mice, the cat snoring
if I try really hard to hear.

It doesn’t sound like the apocalypse
unless you count the furnace sounds
as the voice of depletion, the mice as inheritors
of our ramshackle ruins, the snoring cat as
the voice of inattention to threats.

That is a choice one can make, I guess,
a choice to let things be what they are and 
not give them meaning. I have tried that
and been found wanting. I have been found longing
to let go, but then the cat stretches and snorts,

something moves in the walls, something
heats up under my feet, and is that the refrigerator
or the rumbling tide of history? 
Perhaps it is not, or it is, or perhaps what is daily
is also what is deadly, and the end is in fact near.

It would be worth your time
to learn how to lie, 

sir. We can see
the smoke rising from

your pants, can see
your nose growing;

perhaps these are illusions
as well, tricky lighting

caused by the waving of
your flagship hair, the shadows

emptying from your mouth?
Sir, we can’t see you behind them —

unless all you are is shadow?
Sir? Are you nothing but smoke

and bad lighting, only a simulation
of human — some kind of 

puppet?  Sir, understand:
we are asking, do you bleed?

Do you weigh anything at all,
sir, or is your incorporeality

so galling to you that you feel
you must stamp this hard on the world?

It would be worth your time
to learn to be a better liar, sir.

Your smoke is showing.
There is nothing in the mirror.