PSORIASIS.

The delight of feeling a large flake yield and part from the body under the insistence of a fingernail must be experienced to be forgiven.

- John Updike

POETRY.

If I could, I would tell
every person I know never
to start writing poetry.
Such a slow and painful
rape of the mind,
bending time and prose into
concrete lines and trite
overused rhymes.
I would tell them instead
to smell their own hands
at the place where the
skin dips into the
bone, the web where the
scent is wholly one's
own, of pennies and promise and
copper-plated smooth
sweaty sex.
I would tell them instead
to mind their own feet,
where the toes curl upon
meeting the ground, where
the arches ache to
rub against grass, where
the hamstrings round up
just under
the ass.
I would tell them to walk
through a cemetery door, to
watch the way the
dust meets the floor,
to listen to silence
and submarine sounds, but never
to write it
down.