i was the worm
snatched from its dew-laden pasture
as others were
trampled in the wan glow of a waning quarter moon.
i was the worm
thrown among a blind and faceless
throng
in a cardboard shanty,
at the foot of an incipient mudslide,
forced to make its bed in excrement and litter,
to make its diet of mercury and lead,
to
efface its anger with the glue used
to repair the shoes of those with feet
and hands that look like bowls of
money.
i was the worm
shaken from its fever dreams and laid out in the bare light of dawn,
squeezed in two by calloused fingers, cast
in vomit and fear, its own
excrement
its own litter.
i feel myself
falling away. i feel
the plunge of cold tempered cruelty.
i am not the cat
with her
nine chances at life. oh, but i have heart—
heart enough to crawl through sawdust even as i dangle,
breathlessly from my branch,
baiting dogs and resentful swine into
desperate acts of violence.
look at me.
there is poetry in the sidelong glance of destiny,
in the flick of the wrist, and the sinuous flow of line,
in the tiny splash as i sink.