A Sage Bag of Intolerable Entrails

Proprioception must have been a task
For anyone excessive as Falstaff.

And how easy is it for any soul,
Fact or fiction or a little of both?

A human mind never makes up the bed.
A human mind never makes up its mind.

Are you a body or are you in one?
Trapped in your cells or pouring out your pores?

None of these questions resolves anything.
There’s no knowing where languages begin

Or where this conversation has to end.
There’s eloquent language loathing bodies

And eloquent language loving bodies,
And no living tongue without living tongues

And hands and brains, many, many of them.
Language without enough bodies, without

A whole society of young and old
Bodies conversing and reproducing,

Will die, will just wither away and die.
Then again, languages are tardigrades

With cryptobiotic capacities,
Once rehydrated, to spring back to life,

And as for you, whether you think you are
A body or in one, you will think so

Through the forms of some language that reached you
From flesh to become part, or most, of you,

Some language from lives that passed before yours,
Carrying along its own characters,

Who had just what bodily boundaries
You’ll never know, exactly, never know

Who may or may not have been living flesh,
Who waddled and laughed, your words from their guts.