We say the heart is sick, meaning something else.
But when we say the body is broken, and it is, the poem,
like a great engine long given up to the weather,
begins to move. Outside, fireweed among the ruins.
We’ve known the seed of failure in action,
how the worm turns on the root, the foredetermined
uncoiling of the double arms into an electric fizz
and last black sputter of cosmic flatulence. Dark matter:
you take the air. I kick the walls, answer the accusations
to an empty room, then sit down to sob amidst the bones.
It starts to rain. You’re elsewhere. Curse god
and die. We grow artful when evil, and broken, take
on the utmost of our powers. The garden withers
with such August, but its energy flows inward and flowers.