We speak as if we're innocent, but it hurts.
                                                -ken stewart

that gnawing worm

who knows the worm gnawing within

intimate like a sexual being with a face

someone we sup with or greet;

a worm like Adam and Eve's

strolling with us in the night-light

in the garbage that tickles our nose

and draws up the vomit;

the worm that's that close

that we befriend it

and train it to live in ourselves

and appear right with others;

the worm that circles our garden 

the one that haunted Cain?

*Reflections of Sidney Poitier:

-My fear is this: I fear that as we cover more of our planet with concrete and steel, as we wire our homes with more and more fiber-optic cables that take the place of more intimate interactions, as we give our children more and more stuff and less and less time, as we go further and further away from the kind of simplicity I knew as a child of Cat Island, our Earth - Gaia or not - will become for us the Wire Mother, and our souls will wither and die as a result.