(cf. Antoine Daudet)
 
 
i.
I was unwell so my doctors gave me poison
many cultures have this tradition
 
many cultures revere their sick
revile or revere the illness revere
 
the sickened as holy for carrying a disruption
of such burden
 
as a doctor can only add to for containing
a demon or humor or wind or abstraction or whatever
 
beats against the inner boughs of life
with such power
 
as to undo a man back to only the frame of his being
clay breathing     in order
 
to spare the healthy confusion
give me your poison weaken me
 
that this illness which
as winter’s wind fills winter’s clean
 
branches fills me
may be weakened weaker than voice
 
 
ii.
what is a voice
what is a voice
 
O god of indeterminate origin
wearing me like a skin
 
rooted into me past poison or prayer
what is a voice