Piercings, tattoos, and self-mutulation
 

I turned twenty-five and stuck a turtle on my chest,
a mask on my shoulder blade, and a wild flower
later that week, for the turtle's company.

I stopped short of the anklet; too near the bone,
anyway I remembered the burn along my shoulder,
and the warning of addiction

half-way through my first mid life crisis;
driving across country with a recorder,
highlights saved on audio for my son.

The continental divide (twice), a perfect square
of baseball diamonds, an enormous rock
formation into Utah that lent weight

to the Mormans parking it in Salt Lake
to worship god, or marry many women.
Who knew which was more significant.

Who cared in the face of low standing clouds,
healing tattoos, and huge rocks
crouched on the edge of salt slabs,
 

The scene did well to cooperate
with my love of extremes and the belief
that I was begininning and end,

wrapped up nicely in various displays
of self-medication, or mutilation?
Certainly the difference lay in definition.

Beside that was before the piercing,
there you had some mutilation.
'Course by Thirty and ten odd years

from my last line it was either the belly or me
dancing through another mid life crisis,
and as any decent addict knows too much

too soon, is no better than too little too late,
so the belly won a hole clean through it's top
and me, I only leak from time to time