for your sake, to help you,
because God knows you needed it.
Go ahead, dive into those beer-battered iguana steaks
and RC Cola--
made by hunchbacks from old cancer drugs
and leaf-tea water from the bird bath.
Ungrateful, that's what you are.
She brings her sheepskin and her medical bag,
her sharp eye and her dull scalpel,
and all you ever do is buzz like a stupid toy as she removes the barbs
she put there over time, millions of them, placed just so.
Too bad one can't make a sampler out of a disappointed look--
you'd never need wallpaper.
Nature provides exactly what each creature needs,
though she has chosen to do without heart, stomach, ovaries,
in favor of giving everything to you, especially those betrayed, doleful eyes.
Now here you are, a donation box she has poured herself into,
sleeping it off,
hating yourself,
collecting methods of suicide like stickers,
last night's appalling Chinese take-out uneaten and wasted (!)
on the table and on the floor where it has spilled and mixed
with the pet hair on the carpet.
See the ants, as industrious as if they were going to Mass,
substituting congealed chicken kow for wafers and wine.
See the roaches, immortal and unstoppable as your jones,
demonstrating grace and sacrifice--
for you! again for you!--
by entertaining the cat
who plays with, and then kills them, but who sometimes
reverses the sequence.
_______
grace for Karin.