Pain

Hangs from your pelvis
like an incomplete, conjoined sibling
with no mind of its own
but enough of yours to make you fear it.

Comes when you are sleeping
to perch on your face and dip its beak
redly into your dreams.
Shucks its claws

on the upholstery of your flesh.
Is a fog-eyed poet, reading aloud to you
endless reams of his own passionate,
excruciating verse.

Squats in the waste it has made of you,
a basilisk-child
you dare not look in the eye.
Remembers the body when it moved

with the ease of light across a lake’s delicate skin.
Watches your babies grow
skins so thick they can’t feel you.
Is an illusion

overcome by mastery of the mind,
an ascetic life, a clean colon, eighteen
valium and a quart of Scotch, a bullet
or all of the above.