it’s blooming season. (papaver somniferum) opium poppies
I count four flowers. and buds. seventeen
black centers against the war-red petals, the color of viscera
or blood coagulated
the rusty red dregs
of the dead man’s dried blood, left rotting, on his gorget


the throat-clutching gorget
over brittle stemmed poppies
and tiny eggs, the caviar dregs
the center seventeen
in the middle, as though they are coagulating
those blood drenched viscera


internal crying bleeding twisting dripping bruising my viscera
my cunt running from my outside to my inside, like a hollow throat, or a gorget
thick clotted coagulation
like clumps of petals, fistfuls of half opened blossoms (poppies_)
learning what it is to bleed, cold showers, at seventeen
spinning down the drain, the human child dregs


“smoke it down to the dregs”
ashy poison, slowly suffocate your viscera
cancerous at seventeen
filter wrapped around it like a gorget
with red lipstick stains contrast, dark as snow and poppies
and the rotting cherry on the end, blooming, coagulating


in a stream of people, a crowd coagulates
…stripped away until you cannot see the dregs
only the elite, the elegant, as ostentatious as Italian poppies
their blue blood viscera
their ornately jeweled gorgets
wringing the necks of girls at seventeen



and this age, this year, it drags …on… forever seventeen
my youth stagnated in my throat by coagulation
defeat from the inside, never expected by the gorget
stopping my words (but they are only dregs)
the bile and secrete of swollen viscera
…on the floor, the bright red puddles blooming, poppies.


seventeen, swiveling the dregs
…of youth, the coagulating days, …cells becoming tissue becoming viscera…
...becoming chain becoming wall becoming gorget… and tucked underneath, a lone poppy.