I have come to slicing out my eyes
     to be like some Gloucester
     and not lost in madness like Hamlet or Lear,
     or die like Ophelia among the waterlillies.

I am a cripple wanting to run and run within those things familiar.
Nothing can taste good anymore –
     the taste of blood and bile overpowers chamomile and thyme.
Nothing can taste good for I have ripped out my tongue
     for all speech ends in incoherent mumblings over space and time
     and all those things which lay in the low, deep part of your chest
          make it hard to breathe.

I have come to slicing out my eyes.
The sight of snow and the deepnessblack of your eyrises drives me to tears.

I'll climb Jacob's Ladder, scale the Tower Of Babel,
     a thousand stories high and long,
     a thousand pages unpunctuated and filled with words x'd out,
     and I'll keep them all a secret,
     wrapped in a box,
     deep in a closet,
     unnoticed,
     until the windows are opened, closet doors thrown wide,
     and the moths let out.