Pomegranates

Alchemy;

Begins with ripping out the organs

And draining the pulpy innards so delicately,

That they won’t feel a thing.

Then, dismembering the arils —

Those glassy, nebulous things

That nest inside their fitted white cage —

Trying not to make a mess,

Or lose any of the juice in the process

As I peel them one by one —

But still, they always find a way

To stain my hands, a merciless shade of red.

It’s such a bloody mess,

A twisted mise en scène that I can’t clean

Or wash off my skin.

No matter how many oceans

Volunteer their tides to try,

I keep scrubbing, again

And again, and again, but still —

My hands are dripping,

In their flesh, and skin, and blood —

Their juices — imbedded

In the grooves and ridges of my palms,

And stuck underneath my fingernails

So deep — that it touches the little crescent moons

That hang upon my ten-fingered horizon.

I resign to the massacre,

Moving survivors to their watery cells,

As I stand there watching

The white, orphan seeds

Swirl around in their glass bowl world —

Hopelessly helpless to whatever comes next.

Some drown, and others float —

But soon enough, they’re all cradled

In the arms of a blender —

Spun into one another, and split

Into tiny molecules, filling every crevasse

And corner of their plastic coffin —

Until they’re strained, and filtered

Into barely half of what they used to be.

But this is just the result of a recipe

I only tried once —

Trying to fix an imbalance,

A hole in my stomach,

With whatever will do the trick, indefinitely

Or temporarily, which ever comes first.

A potion, a poison, a nectar, a broth,

A mush of a thousand red eyes staring back at me

Watching, to see who’ll blink first.