With their fangs
and drool and terrible
breath, how is it
I never noticed them before,
these demons grunging
around my desk.
Of course I pick up
the closest thing, a pen.
Ridiculous weapon. A broom.
They laugh as I charge.
I grab the butcher knife.
They gnash their terrible teeth
and they gargle their terrible spit.
I thrust, and one snatches the knife
from my hand and eats it.
Desperate, I sit in the center of the room,
take a deep breath and start to sing.
It doesn’t work with my children,
but I am ready to try anything.
I sing Finnish lullabies, chants to Shiva,
hymns and ohms and rounds.
They continue their drooling and farting
and burps. I am singing
to myself. There is dinner to be made.
A poem to write. Dishes to clean.
Kids to wash. Bills to pay.
All right, I tell them. If you
will not leave, then while we’re together,
you could teach me something.
And they slowly disappear.
It’s weird. They are gone.
Quieter now. One demon left,
but she is the most virulent of all.
I look at the dishes. I look at her scales.
I look at the computer. I look at her nails.
I remember that this is the point
where Milarepa , the Tibetan saint,
would have put his head
in the demon’s mouth. I don’t want to.
What if it hurts? What if his story
is not my story? This is my real neck.
This is my life we’re talking about.
And that rancid breath.
And those yellow teeth.
You think you’re so right,
says the demon. You think
you know even something small?
You think that I won’t eat you anyway,
your pride, your stories and all?
I try to build a wall
made of “I am so innocent, so right,”
and trip on my own self-righteous bricks
but I am too worn down from the fight
to catch myself from the fall.
And as I fall, the my separates itself from life
until life Is all I have.
And the demon laughs her terrible laugh
as I land with my head in her terrible lap.