Selfish

Selfish

Eating off the regurgitated flesh of this tree’s generations

we all become host and parasite

our blood sustains the rings of rot

and saps the precious energy from our limbs

Occasionally our longing for height and light

pulls a long hard desire from our depths

and we stretch for the sun

but if the familial undead does not bite us down

-no acorn flies free-

we’ll chop ourselves hard

for we have been trained

to be our own axmen

So the circle inside cycles outside

ever expanding to every branch

with a fat heavy bark of guilt strangling

How much weight can be taken

until all leaves wither and die

and one is just a bare branch

in the midst of a perpetual autumn

How much weight should be taken

Why should any be carried at all

Never having been taught to surf the wind

to risk the crash and decomposition is foreign to me

and I have clung to the roots of fear

long past the age of consent

with the nails of the willing crucified

To weld the hatchet as scalpel

to excise poison with minimal blood loss

to cut through a lifetime’s attachment

burn the forest with controlled flame

stand responsible for the rain of ash

and withstand the wet sawdust of the hatefully loved

Stay and disintegrate as a dead stick

or chance a different death

to become one’s own oak

Time is screaming the choice

feed the fire

or dig in and dissolve

June 19, 2011

Tressa Lee Breen