Becoming Midas

Wake up

& rinse my hands

with god’s tears

before I scratch my soul

with my aging thumb.

I step into my tailored fate

every morning at 7:05

never sure whether it suits me –

the texture of the cloth

makes my skin itchy.

My nails lock my knuckles,

neck and ego,

but I can never turn my index finger

into the key to life,

with fingerprints like eyes opening,

wounds waking.

Should strip my crust off me,

skin the mantle and expose the core,

boiling. Should reduce myself

to bones, to the structure

of universe.

My greedy fear overflows

into a galaxy, a nebula made of gold.

I have to pray to be cursed,

to use the apparatus

by which I touch the world

to unwrap my tissues, organs and ribs.

To tear myself up:

solidify all the bile and blood

- into concrete lava

rip the abdominal and pectoral

– into sheets of red quartz

unroot the artery and vein

– into metal snakes

& clutch my heart.

2022.5.26