flesh

i am all about using all of the animal.
me, the animal, is not getting
as much use as i would like. i could 
be growing a cherry tree from my head
or i could be sewing corn up my spine.
instead i ask the dirt to do this for me.
i talk to the toads who, in autumn,
are considering their options for
places to potato all winter. 
i have been watching videos online
about the book bound with human flesh. 
i think people are a little more into them
then is called for. i mean they're call 
& all but i guess i just think skin
is everywhere. my only hope is that 
the words inside are something the animal
would have liked to hold. i think 
about this for cow too. all the leather
bound bibles. the cows, of course,
are never christian. sometimes deist.
sometimes pagan. but never christian. 
i think of the words pouring over
their mind in the afterlife dark. if i came
& despined the book, would it set them free
or have they come to expect a downpour 
of language across their skin? i think 
if i had to be holding words i would want
it to be poetry though i am indecisive 
about what kind of poetry. hopefully
at least one pantoum. i don't want
to be kept behind a glass case though.
i want my flesh book passed around. 
smoothed from holding. the cows i know
are always talking about leather. i show 
one my shoes & they say, "only wear them
once each moon." i do not question 
their wisdom. i have made the whole
flesh book thing seem a little romantic i think.
i feel the need to tell you that most of the historic ones
are doctor-patient situations which would
be much more interesting if it were patients
making books of their doctors. instead,
the other way around, it has a way of trapping
skin in examination. one, a psych patient
like me. her pathology played over 
a loudspeaker. i think that book should
be rebound. give her at least some mary oliver
or even the romantics. something less terror.
the body though is maybe never able to escape.
stories are like bones. cast for the future.
rowing down a river, moon-white.