The Worm in Your Ear

It could crawl in your ear while you’re sleeping, 

the worm with its hunger for dreams.

It would pull out the threads of your brain, 

and you’d play at its game as it opened your seams. 

In despair you have felt no one wanted your thoughts, 

but the worm could survive on their gleams.

And its curious call in the depths of the night 

that you’ve listened to silently, patiently, mumbles in streams.

When the line has gone dead, 

you have wandered and walked with the moon in its beams. 

But the call, was it sent to your house or your head? 

Did it ask, “Has the worm ever said what it means?”

Don't Be Shy

I tried to keep my blight from spreading—tendrils bloom

beneath my skin—but now my neighbor’s corpse is ash.

They want to know the truth, to end the pile of bodies’ rise;

I know that truth but do not wish to make a stir, or clash.

By dark our town has fallen quiet, though bursts

of choked up sobbing break in now and then.

At dawn a doctor all in white will come,

and house by house she’ll drag each family out to pens.

She’ll stick and test our flesh there, one by one,

and when she reaches mine, she’ll find the oldest line.

So, shyness forces me to spread the sickness further; 

wrapped to hide the truth abroad, I flee before the sun returns.

The truth is: death came quick for me last week,

but still I walked and spoke in town just fine.