you ask me to make more art

but the vultures have come and gone.

My body has been stripped for parts,

any gold or silver stolen for the pawnshops.

My head has been rusted for so long

that you can’t tell the broken parts from the living

Coal and gas fumes choke you

with the smell of dead things—

dead things like me.

---

And I ask you,

“with what? with what?”