toy soldier

I carry a spectre from my past,
when,
mangled-lacerated,
I stared from a tatami floor
at the plank ceiling above.

Dragged in.  Indignant
as I coughed and
bits of red stained her sock.
She called me Boy,
Foolish Fighter,
while puzzling me together.
She called me Boy
and not even a moon between us!  Bitch
Though—
the way she stitched—
renewed me from the earthy womb.
Cocooned,
taking porcelain-sips of her,
     Why live? Or let live?

*     *     *

I, grown among weeds,
mended as
a beautiful stranger to myself.
More than the one, unfamiliar face
     that found Deadman pitiful.
     Burned in aortal hubris fuel,
     left smoking and alive.
One becomes one hundred
     equally beautiful
     equally strange faces.
Perpetual mementos that surround,
     allow no light.
Luckily, in a stupor
they float as blank canvas.
My world at the whim
of my brushtip.


*     *     *

I knew nothing of her---
would never know.
     Certainly I will stay with her.
She kicked me out once
     the glue had dried.  Damn it!
I should have loved her.
     But she called me Boy
          and I hated her.
What a fool I was to dwarf fate
or define myself by a number.