To step inside and tell myself
that this pulsing, bloody, seething mess
is not me, but someone else.

All the scars, all the wars,
I began but could not end,
all the hurting white hot stars
that life does send,
all the leaves of fall
golden and red,
like death.

In Tarot cards I see
lilacs from Eliot’s spring
merge into a summer evening,
when corpses rot on blocks of ice
melting into nothing.

I step inside and tell myself
that this obstinate chant and unseemly want
is not me, but someone else.