my head will go first

none of them know

doctors excavate

while i swallow dirt

my parents

think they can have me

institutionalized

mother counts off the signatures

she needs on her hand

she’s one short

from giving me a

life behind the bricks

it is true my head is a poblem

but i’ll take care of this myself

my failing kidneys will never fail

i have not succumbed:

no liquid crystal television

no triple bypasses

no bulldozers

some say i will be damned

shoveling coal

into the boilers of the titanic

for eternity

drowning a billion times