Coping Prana Poem by Will Alexander

It is the way I breathe
through chronic terrifying ferns
through a black ungracious stoma

it is this uranium rejoinder
this impact pointing backwards

& when witnessed
causes observers to panic
to blur
& forget
& to flee

they can't see my approach
my wayward dorsal looming
my lettering in black drizzle

it is my approach
my weaving
my sigil as curved embankment

therefore
I can never name myself
or plot myself
according to the sparks or the splinters from the work bench

dazed
ruthless with salivation
with my awkward insular roaming
I am like a few darkened eaglets riveted against the moon

then I am brought to a table by deafness
feasting with herons
which spins me by embranglement
by in-circular abatement
always seeking to have me neutered beneath my derma
so as to talk to myself
so as to cancel my structureless scrutiny

they speak of me as lawless
as despicable
as a typhoon in a sea well
as to morals
as to fixed & accelerated combination

they fix me
as deserted
bereft
as a fragment from a starving lion's compendium

I am considered
as pointless positron without image
as hieroglyph
as sundial
as martyr

being leakage from a barbarous index province