Lead solution

There is a constant rapping on my skull, from the inside

Things want to get out—I need to be,

I need to be, they plead and hit and hit

And most of them are your fault, so I asked

If we can have some time for quiet from them and from you

Other times I will bring them to live here,

shoot them out of wrists and hands

and spray them around the house

like wildflowers in a yellowed vase.

When I can make them be for you,

Those hours.  And then the idea happened

That everyone in the potentially florid house might

Split themselves as Emily had.

There is a difference, if course,

Between a pledge and a surprise corpus callosum.

And when the new idea becomes giant and stretches into flaw and even,

Even though it’s new when it’s commonplace,

Nothing works.  The solution is no longer easy smooth or even potable.

Salt and lead live together,

And someone wants to drink.

I can live with water in a cup,

Although I lose my characteristic taste.

You don’t want to drink lead, in the first place,

And if you heated it enough to be a liquid

You would be a gas.  Leave it, and it will

just sit at the bottom

Gray powder in a pile on the floor of the vase

Just under the cut green stems. 

-Citron