Collapsed sideways amongst a mire
of tired bedcovers,
waiting for you to call,
and a swan breathed to life
by a flute's damp reed
making a mirror for my
matte-feathered prostration.

And now I am the swan,
and not linen-white or tamed,
but one of the wild black birds
that coast the eddies and snags
like dreary death barges,
their snouts alight with the tiny flames
of funeral lamps.

And the swan that I am
is not gliding gracefully
in the current macabre,
but is nearly-dead,
sprawled on its Victorian taffeta skirts,
its horrible neck twisted
in a dying kind of strangeness
amongst the sour sedges and worms.
I am not yet dead, but I am dying.

I am dying from a lump of spoiled bread
turned to lead in my slender throat:
a bland wadge of hopefulness,
wedged like a lump of loaf
cast aloft by a careless hand.

Whoever was it that told me
I shouldn't gorge on the scraps
thrown out onto the black ripples of the shore?
Oh, delicious poison!
Whoever said your leftovers,
delicious as they were,
could be a slow murder?