A Metaphor for Chronic Pain
Nerve plants: known to be
temperature sensitive.
Preserve under glass.
Grow in fertile soils
and water regularly.
Fainting may occur.
When in doubt, water
it out. Revival of the
plant is often swift.
Creeping evergreen:
recovery looks easy.
And this is where the
metaphor breaks: the
body breaks, and solutions
are not so simple.
Endo-
endangered – at imminent risk, as in endangered species; danger may come in the form of deforestation, the hubris of humanity, or the inside of one’s own body; some dangers are taken more seriously than others (those with uteruses need not apply)
endear – to charm, such as charming a medical professional to convince them that you are human (a mother, a student, a reader; recommending books can help, or talking about your daughter’s favorite animal—anything to endear them, make you human, motivate them to treat what ails)
endeavoring – to find solutions to blood (in excess), pain (in excess); clearly, the problem is excess, and the body can’t find its own way out from under, tissue growing where it shouldn’t be, intimacy with anatomy in ways that could only be born of the body trying to destroy itself
endemic – a kind of irony; diseased reproductive organs, certainly, and endemic seems now and forever linked to diseases (the threat of pandemic-turned-endemic-in-name-only), but the endemic should be restricted, local, and endometriosis is anything but—characteristic, yes; native to the body, yes—but it all grows wild as it likes, a body beyond control
endless – pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill after pill until such a time as a body rids itself of the ability to produce life from a seed
endoadaptation – fixing of interior parts, turning together like gears in an engine; a quieting of excesses; a balancing of organs; a harmony sung internally; as compared to exoadaptation, a fixing of functioning with the outside world
endogeny – imagine: growing from within; metaphoric, like coming to terms with a body that cannot be tamed; or literal, like wildflowers sprouting from a nexus of pain, a kind of magic to transform its nature
endow – the sound of grandiosity: rights, or land, or a large sum of money; but also, that which is naturally yours—a body, with all its quirks and eccentricities
endurance – a test of: time, persistence, weakness, strength, the desire to give up, the will to go on, pain tolerance, constitution, resolution, hope, sheer stubbornness
enemy – can take many forms, familiar and unfamiliar, exterior and interior, and suspicion becomes a delicate game of puzzling out the enemy quicker than the enemy can strike
energy – [entry not found]
en fête – the celebration of finding the right way to temper
enflame – to inflame body tissue, or to spark hot-headed feelings like anger and excitement; excess (again); to lose control; violence, fire, to cause some kind of spirited harm
engender – to produce, as in a child that you’re lucky to have in your condition
Artificer
euglossa dilemma
cryptic sister species of glossy greenest, a shade
of irony morphologically indistinguishable, but
incapable of generation
still, they have different
means of creating
traditionally, males curate courtship
perfumes from orchids, but
when orchids are scarce you gloss a dilemma
harvesting instead from
basil Mexican petunia yellow bells
purple secretia firebush &
Datura, alternatively called devil’s trumpets or
moonflower or hell’s bells
(so much symbolism it feels narrative in nature:
purple secrets, fires and devils and hells shining,
strangely, alongside moons and bells like
a nursery rhyme)
even rotted timber and wood oozing resin
will do in the crafting of signature scents—
learning how to make rot and ooze sing
sweetly in the absence of orchids, and humans
think themselves such clever creators
while artists hum all around us
you gloss over a dilemma, masking
True Nature
as if there is only
One
masking a choice in
unpleasantness, but there is no
choice—there is only survival
a chain of command coded
because nothing glitters in extinction
and even displaced Euglossini
can abandon categories that bind
in the name of new creation
Armor & Poison
Chrysomallon squamiferum:
soft flesh gilded with pyrite
a 21st century discovery
new-to-us and already endangered
Nothing more than delicate creatures, snails—
easily crushed, easily forgotten, & yet this
(gestated in deep sea, forged
by fissures broken near namesake volcanoes)
this is one who would fortify, sheathing
the self in iron not by chance, not by sheer
will, but by the need of ancestors
again & again
And here: the proof that it works laid bare.
Micromelo scriptus
a fragile resident of tropical
waters. Paper Bubble, such delicacy
as to risk crush, tear, breakage
by name alone. Thin calcium barely-shells
(some even inverted)
translucent defenses falling short. Instead:
headshields burrowing. Active predators,
consumers of kin, but also: once eaten,
its toxins become the toxins of its captor,
its destroyer, defenses not by brute
strength but by trickery & transference.
And we are all so:
forged in fires others cannot
fathom, prey turned predator, the underbellies
(once tender) turned hard and toxic
Gastropods a fable (warning)
an allegory (illustrating)
the way a body adapts, the genes
that mutate to accommodate
the great experiment of life after life
because we must learn to defend
or hide or fight or keep pushing forward
somehow, the only way that ancestors
become ancestors and descendants become
We cannot be shredded or we fall to pieces
We cannot be crushed or we turn to dust
We cannot be forgotten or we leave no legacy
Instead: gilt with pride, bright colors for toxins
Not forgotten, no—
always reminding, always a cautionary tale
No longer burrowing, no longer enough—
Active predators, now and always,
and safe: our own saviors and each other’s
Alien Buddha Press 
Superb!
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