City Poem

Take my eyes and put them in the soup bowls
in the alleyways behind Spadina restaurants.
Cut off my hand and leave it there,
in the crook of a magnificent oak tree,
a message coded for future generations.
Leave my sweat; in its glisten you can see
the shimmering reflections of orange
streetlight halos on a thin coat of moisture.
Take my ribs and lay them down
as streetcar tracks. Take my nails
and stick posters on them. Take my knuckles
as balls padding the shelves
of a chatchkie shop with a smiling waving cat,
Buddha crap, lotus blossom hand towels.
Take my ears and deep fry them,
and slide them down the bar to the
hungry patron. Take and take. All this
is yours. My throat, freely wrapped
around a pylon. My hair wrapped as insulation
around electrical wires, fraying in the wind.
Take my intestines and squeeze them,
as the roadkill squirrels were squeezed. Take
my brain, which could foretell the weather
based on fluid buildups in its ventricles.
Take my tendons, and make
police lines with it. Take my stomach,
hollow it out, and put in it
jam for the winter. Take my teeth
and make prayer beads, and put them
in your coat for safekeeping.

Consider: "The stone fell on the pitcher? Woe to the pitcher. The pitcher fell on the stone? Woe to the pitcher."