Do You Think That’s Air You’re Breathing? (by William Merricle)

Do You Think That's Air You're Breathing?
I’m fucked, I’m fucked.
Entropy grows
Complicated.
The stars get hard
And thready.
I am near, I am near.
It’s so funny
I forgot to hemorrhage
But suddenly now it makes me laugh.
This city’s on bloody fire.
I am here, I am here,
Happy as a clotted king of pop.
The oud is warm to the touch
But the lute has a chilly demeanor
And a long, sad face.
Even now, even now, every time
I think of you I start to cramp.
But I digress, I digress
Into an illusion of chronology
Infected with hypercoagulability.
The seven primary chakras
Grow lonely in the muck.
Flower sutras undergo
Catheterization.
Eternity is hideously taloned.
You’ll never know.
You’ll never know
How slow the moments go
Until you’ve repeatedly
Cursed the darkness.
In this way we’ll live forever.
Bottom line? Bottom line:
On the site where
The morgue once stood
Churns the soft, purulent thrombus
Of my karmameter.
William Merricle lives in Lima, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Pudding,
Slipstream, ZeroCity, and many other publications. He is capable of 35,600
gigaflops per second.
"Do You Think That's Air You're Breathing?" © 2010 by William Merricle, used with permission





LOVE this! x
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Thanks, Janet!
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yeah this one especially rocks // love the repetition, the sense of dialogue with eternity // great stuff. carolyn
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Thanks, Carolyn!
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do like this one.. hope I might meet him this evening in Marion..
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Thanks, Chris! How did Marion go? I'll be reading there on April 2nd.
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It's a nice group... they're very much looking forward to having you and Dianne... you'll have a good time.
They serve food too so come hungry...
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We're looking forward to it!
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