I’m afraid I can’t explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?

— Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground


I
From the high-care low-life facility where my head lolls in the briny bowl

Doctor Death asks what my priorities are            What goals I have in the short term

What I am prepared to sacrifice       What not                  I’ll tell you what I want—

to make bad choices, pick a fight, drink more wine, raid the fridge at midnight, steal

that woman’s earrings, disembowel carnations, rip to shreds that New Idea then shoot

for a wave where an octopus looks me in the eye like a Hindu god with the wisdom of

a newborn babe, takes my measure, shows me personality, holds a tea party with

nothing in it but chocolate cake and opioids then hides me in her cave, two of us

minus our ancestral shells sharing a spliff, smoking our guffawing heads off. 
II
Back in our tanks outside visiting hours we are chastened, and when nobody’s

looking she oozes across to greet me in redness of excitement        I touch her head,

she turns creamy white, relaxed like no one I know, so many lobes coil around her

throat        She meets my mind, spits salt water in my face to show me how much

she knows me, she knows me, knows me—bored to death by melancholy she squeezes

her boneless body through aquarium bars it’s mayhem as she marches across her Amherst

lawn suckering everything in her path Down Down Down to the water changing colour,

texture, spots, commas		slashing pages with short lines—

long-necked funny unlived Em playing with rage and form, dying tired without me,

alone