Self-portrait with phonemic analysis

I kneel at the Calvary,

             the sun—pelting on my skin like a rainstorm

of fragmented pieces of glass,

             I drag my self towards a crucifix

where phonology says:

[a boy] —> [a broken boy] / [grief]—[grief]

I think myself a guitar’s string

blessing the threnodies of the aches in this poem,

             who will crush pomegranates

into juice for me?

             Who will beat the bush of this boy into

a floral garden of roses?

             Who will pour joy like a fricative sound

into the living of this boy?

I seek the rule to the deletion of grieving, where:

[grief] —> [deleted] / [bliss]—[bliss]

Where I will sleep through the night

             without the body of a knife lurking in my dreams.

Where I will sleep through the night

             without drowning in the pool of my own fears.

Where I will sleep through the night

             & not wake up as a butterfly’s wing.

But insertion says:

[insert]—> [grief] / [bliss]—[bliss]            of a boy.

Recently, I touch things & they flower out a

monochrome

of death & my father—how he squeezed life out of him

like an orange.

Dear poet, when will you stop performing an autopsy

                   with poems on all the broken things you know,

especially including yourself?

This poem, a psych ward, this poem, a psych nurse

which grew                                  from your psyche.

            Like a wood frog, I’m still holding my pee

through hours, through the night

where pain is a bagpiper blowing its pipe

to me in these times of war.