Albatross

I.

Kafka, perhaps, tucked up great anxieties into his heart about our social feu;

his toxic tack through misfortune neatly unfolding the waves of history painfully yielding no certain end.

There must've been, too, infestations plaguing his life: enduring cockroaches and blood-letting flies –

all seeping liquid-like from the walls of his torment, scaling across his flesh – putrid and gnawing; persisting.

II.

And I think on when I may meet God in my life/death transition (sleepiliy attempting ignorance of my horrors)

and hear Her ask: "What can I answer?" She sees all my tender nothings falling from my thoughts, welling in my soul;

but, finally, my heart speaks without warrant: "Was I a good person?"

And Her time-stopped poultice of afterlife flushes me back down and I am reborn as those fruit flies who I killed with chemicals.

1.

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