The Bread We Eat in Dreams

Don’t finish the poem. Not for nothing

is it a snake

that eats her tail

and means eternity. What’s a few verses worth

anyway? Everyone knows

poetry doesn’t sell. Don’t you ever feel

like you’re just

a story someone is telling

about someone like you?

I get that. I get you. You and me

we could fit

inside each other. It’s not nihilism

if there’s really no point to anything.

I have a secret

down in the deep of my dark.

All those other kids who wanted me

to call them paladins,

warriors, saints, whose swords had names,

whose bodies were perfect

as moonlight

they’ve set up a township near my liver

had babies with the maidens they didn’t save

invented electric lightbulbs

thought up new holidays.

You can have my body

just like you wanted.

Or you can keep on fighting dragons

writing dragons

fighting dragons

re-staging that same old Cretaceous deathmatch