Mark DeCarteret 2024

MARK DECARTERET

The Year I Went Off

Goodbye old body. No need to double as a soul anymore. Blood the only language. You’ve both understood. With its taste of dueling guns on your tongue. Sharing in that last impulse. To supersize every prize. Before rioting the air. O goodbye old body. No need for another camera. To try to remake you. In the image of gods. So aged we stopped locking their cages. Or try to recreate. Your earliest signs of madness. On the sides of an even more super dome. Today, still dogged by those most off of seasons. This new slate of diseases. So, body, let yourself rest. Tell it so slow it wells up. And lowers you down to where. Your brothers lost their feel for the sky. Asked for seconds and were loaned dust. Owning up to those same minor notions. We’ll entrust to our caskets. The rusty cough of its hinge. Goodbye old body. No need to butter yourself up with more fool’s gold. Be beholden to the stare of these strangers. Go on yet another binge. No longer sold on. The informality of a hand. The lingering dig of a finger. Yes, the sky holds only guesswork. Segueing to those clouds. Lost on the unimaginativeness of the land. And the singlemindedness of the sun. So, say goodbye, old body. And try to mean it this time. Our task here is near done. It’s a little too late to alternate. One life
for another. Your mother finally right for a change. You haven’t much talent. But let’s not get hung up. On such things as mattering. Bringing one’s memories into the light. For now, feel the rain on your forehead. Forget the lies you’ve been fed. You leave in good hands.

Mark DeCarteret sang and played guitar for Shim Jamb. And sings and plays drums for Codpiece.