You Look Like I Feel

You Look Like I Feel

You Look Like I Feel

Dirt on my chin and I wonder: am I already
in the ground? Like a toy turned real, I cannot shed
the sense that I have died. The German word

for Heaven’s the same

as the German word for sky. On hearing a cruel
prince was in danger, I prayed for him to thrive,
not for his own sake, but for the concubines,

sure to end up buried

along. To my real face, a man once crowed
I RUINED YOU, and though he did, the joke’s
on him: he ruined me only for this world,

and this world is not long

for itself. The Earth, that ever-loving
but distrustful kin, keeps leaving us just a little
pocket money when it dies, never the land –