The Story of the Cr

The Story of the Crippled Horse Who Thought He Could Fly But, Like Icarus, is a God's Drunken Mistake

"my spine is broken,"
"my spine is broken and i will never walk again."
i am wonderful and beautiful and pessimistic and
strong and my smoky courage is enhanced by
malboros and cocaine

"don't talk like that,"
i speak in a thousand tongues all of which have
been run over and stapled and crucified and left
to hang for the world to see like a lynching
"you're as broken as anyone else in the world."

"most are welded together but me,"
"but me,"
"no, i'm unfixable."
god must have drank himself to near death and
all because of me and when i go to heaven i will
bribe him with a new flask

"you sound like you're making your own eulogy,"
that's because i am, and god is just waiting to have
a drink and he will be the only one who i won't tell
to get their own fucking lighter and he will be proud

"have you looked at my vertebrae,"
"you would be amazed by how much of it i lack."
i wonder if jesus smokes, too, because then i could
maybe join the holy trinity as the fourth wheel

"you talk too much,"
"you talk way too much,"
sometimes when i sleep i feel god's fingers wriggling
in my arms and they grow out like saplings and i
become the tree of life
"maybe you shou-"

"and my brain stem in torn right down the middle,"
"that's why not only can i not walk,"
"half my brain isn't even my own."
and then other times i feel my leaves fall off and i
die like the stars do, bright and tragic and deafening

"you are such a loss,"
she says
"you are such a loss."
because i am a labyrinth but i flood and drown
everyone for no particular reason, just to watch
them decide whether or not to swim on

"my body is not even my own,"
i say
"i am horrifying, i am a grotesque,"
"but you cannot see it because you are blind,"
i am blind, too, really, i am paralyzed and deaf
and blind and cancerous and i am an ulcer
"but you are blind willingly."

"i am not,"
"you are such a sad thing,"
"like wilted flowers."
but i am not that glorious, and she is being
poetic as though to calm my wings from beating
too hard and waking up the neighbours but she
is wrong, a false prophet, and my cells die every
second i am not touching the sun

"i am wilted because there are no planets,"
"there are no worlds and no stars to warm me."
and i lift
and i rise