santos scribes

head lice knit
and crawl across worried crown,
bowing

fattened tick sticks
to tender lid,
leeched
for what eyes without color can see

stained front teeth stand guard,
jutted and yellow
from words not permitted
past 28 cells
of prison-smiles

a tiny heart murmurs,
a tiny breathless hole
love and sadness grow
from buried garden ditch, green

indignant mole breaks irregular line
stitch-break-gape
stitch
break
gape
navel football scar lives

10,000 tales trap
sack-sized bubbles
beneath scared plexus,
burst pain-
stuck fluid never flows, sacred

an inherit hair grows
backward
into
itself,
hits water maybe
or better still
a root
with which to hang itself from