Placebo

I'm now the remedies—

Two pills, Crown Royal and water

Bittersweet with roses, Daughter

Of Fine Absurdities.

I am the antiphon.

And I'm responding for the dead

In mind on mornings when the head

Does acrobatics on

The clouds. I'm naked in

A stranger's home, twelve needles placed

Like hairs in living tissue, spaced

On each meridian.

Black voodoo doll, all out

In the open, and now I've bet

The whole fake farm. The table's set.

And I breathe in, breathe doubt,

Hearing new age music

At will on empty patios.

I am the great placebo

For me, even you, sick

In my same waiting room.

I am the lab where everything

Does what it doesn't do. Getting

Well, I see concrete bloom

And I find happiness

In leaves soaking like wrinkled hands

In tepid baths of rain, frail hands

I hope to slap then kiss

Until the dithyramb

Fades to a headache, though I'm too

Far gone to flinch and nothing's true.

I don't know what I am.