Had to see the doctor today.

Don’t mind the 45-minute wait.

Can withstand her hand inside me.

            But can’t accept

            the tilt of her head

            Neck straight chin swivelling

            left to right                   (unnatural angle

                                                    Dr Exorcist-Lite: genuine empathy sold separately)

Concerned-curious

performative listening face

Like a puppy on TikTok

            They drug them, you know

The internet animals

The unlikely friends

            Dog and bear

            Cat and crow

            Not really friends

Just high near each other        (I’ve had friends like that)

Or maybe that’s apocryphal

            Another cats grown in jars myth

Untrue but still correct          (in the broadest sense of the word)
I haven’t Googled my symptoms

                         (we’re supposed to use Ecosia now

                        but it hasn’t got its own verb yet)

Because everything online is cancer

                                                   (Remember when

                                                   everything online

                                                   was just Hitler.

                                                   Seemed better then.

                                                   I guess I was lucky

                                                   to believe

                                                   – for a short while –

                                                   there was

                                                   only one villain.)
I don’t have cancer

            Just a pelvis filled with

            things that shouldn’t be there

            Copper coins lodged in my viscera

Leftovers from my

operational era

No-one carries cash now

so it’s me

And those plastic horses          (the ones you see outside supermarkets)

all sitting static, immobile

            outdated currency

            tarnishing

            inside of us
Maybe that’s why

I don’t write anymore

            I cut off all my limbs

            thought it might help

            to be lighter                    (it didn’t)

But I still look

for the moon

The scythe-slice

of reflected light

            At least I have that

                                                   (The horses

                                                   have nothing

                                                   but dead air)