Think of your brain
As an instrument
Of interrogation, a delicate tool

For removing the nails that protect
The restless fingers
Of the life you have been given.

The brain you will find
Can break every bone
Not once but often.

It extracts the most detailed confessions
Of sins both real and imagined,
Plots to blow up houses and bridges,

Bridges you have only dreamed of crossing,
Houses in which someone dressed like you
Plays at preparing food for children

Who close around you like fingers,
Little enamel plates
On which you have artfully arranged

Strips of mother and father.
Eat your motherfather you say
As the brain bursts in.

Under the brain’s direction,
You beat yourself
With a baseball bat.

All of your bones are broken
Not once but often.  The brain
Is methodical and thorough.

You admit you are guilty, you confess
To every bone that is broken.
The children are taken away

For their own protection,
Though as the house grows dark
You could swear you see them

Huddled like chairs
No one has ever sat in.
The plates are gone,

The mother and father
Swept up or eaten.
A clock ticks

Between beatings and confessions.
The hands would tell you how old you are
If you could only see them.

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