No.

I'm nothing but an animal. And I know it.
I sleep in nests and howl when hurt,
lick bloody wounds with red tongue
like a lamb in a pen when it's bit by a bird.


I'm nothing more than matter,
never mind the morals
or the drills of instinct coursing through my dumb
dead brains.


I've only to expire
in time
like any beast will
someday.


I'd admit to only loving in the face of
loss
And everything I've loved I've lost.
Is lost.


I'm a chigger in the coarse doe hair.
I suck the blood from beating veins,
wrestle life away from every other
living thing with the disregard inherent in survival.


I'm the filthy ocean heaving,
alive and dead at once
with trillions of blind and cunning
anemones
wriggling in a stupor.
Not yet dead
but without care or feeling.


And even as an animal I feel
at one and one apart with you.
Feel a sighing in my bones.
Seek a rainbow in the wind.
Wretch a vomit on the rose.
Shoot the cap guns at the cars.
Throw a wristwatch in the sea.
Say I, “Fuck time! It is the enemy and I am nothing more than an animal with no morals and no beating veins and everything's a tragedy of survival and no one ever wins.”


I have only to recite my vows of apathy,
to stiff-arm sympathy
for a ruse
and relish in the one trueness
of every thing:
This is not fun.
My heart may beat at double speed,
but thrills are cheap
and suspense dull
and happiness a pill I'm loathe to take.