Have I earned this pain
this dark acquaintance with the recesses of my pelvis?
Pain is a guide. It charts a detailed cartography
of the intimacy of the bowels
with the bladder and the prostate;
of their mysterious connection with the tip of the penis,
a burning trail that enables me to understand
the improbable link between my perineum and the end of my urethra;
of the intricacy of this and other tubes, sins and sinews.
Pain has shown me this.
But again, this knowledge is not the issue — have I earned it, I want to know.
Have I earned this shit I shat
this pain and this blood
coming from a swollen belly, from irritable bowels
reduced to a tumultuous nothingness,
a tumescent heaving of waters and worms.
Or have I drunk and eaten idly, my pain a well-deserved
sword for my gluttony and greed?
I stare deeply at the toilet-bowl
and try to grasp
behind my feces
my face
my crimson face in the now quiet bowl.
In a fragment of a second I see it:
a perfectly intent look passing behind imperfectly formed stools
to reach my face distorted and shredded and blooded
like an ingrate replica of my intestines.
I could compose an ode
an odd ode to my bowels
for I was given my insides like Borges or Tiresias their blindness,
as a living clepsydra,
a measure of time and courage and discipline
discipline–not rigidity
but a delicate balance
a diffuse limit for the untrained eye
a skill you must learn to master
its strictures not altogether apparent
but tangible or reachable or hopeful
for those who seek.
