I want to be respected be a poetic academic
I am not smart enough not disciplined enough

energy communicable though like disease
eating away my own flesh a gallon of maggots

pouring out of my brain and back into my wet
mouth I buy milk that will spoil beside the next

molding jug islands of growths outside me how
can I control the way my mind dives off its board

so insular I keep knocking from inside the hollow
edges of my skull come out come out wherever

you are

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Fall 2020)