4 poems by Chris Butler

Contagious Cancer

I am a cancer cell,
intending to spoil
the whole bunch
by back-stroking down
the blood stream with
lymph fluids, while
establishing colonies in
the composting colon and
expanding real-estate
prostate space above a
towering tumor on the
left testicle, just to
lounge around the lungs,
then exhaled onto the
apex of the nervous system,
before spreading out
to this epidermis surface,
exposing my true self.



Down

I don’t
want to live
down in the
basement,
where the single
synthetic sun
beams artificial
light from a
dangling bulb,
swinging my struggling
shadows with each
futile pass as I bob
for the contents of
cobwebs, while
succumbing to
surrounding mouthfuls of
fiberglass insulated
cotton candy mixed
with carbon monoxide,
then holding
my breath while
hovering over the
graveyard corners
of discarded cockroach
carcasses, hollowed
out exoskeletons
of insects ingested by
incest marked with
toothpick crosses,
all underneath
the weight
of home.



Grind

Grinding my teeth
and thinking of you,
like I’m chewing sinew
or bleeding meat,

when you’re stuck in
my sandpaper enamel,
breaking the brittle
minerals while crawling
over and around the
rows of rolling molars
or lodged between the
cracked gaps, ripping
at my rotting roots,
where mint-flavored
floss splits the
reddened gums.

Creaking mandible jaw
until my face aches,
chisels this mouth
into crowned porcelain
dentures, straightened fake,
to forget one flaw.



Libido

I got a full-frontal
lobotomy to sever
my infected libido
and swollen ego,
so double-jointed
surgeons could stitch
together wilting skin
with shivering fingers,
using slivered string
and plaster cast masks
as memorable memorabilia
of stuff that once was.