Scream

I bummed a cigarette from a guy when I was in the ninth grade.
He gave me the wrong one
or he dosed me with PCP on purpose
either way.

I felt my heart stop
then start again, as tho kicked by a mule
and then stop, as if clenched in a huge cosmic fist
then start again in an adrenalized lightening thump
and over and over again

I felt my body two feet away
I looked at it as it rotted
in a gangrenous pestilent mass of flesh
I smelled the stink of the decay
and I was left with no physical part

I screamed,
and I kept screaming
and in large part, have been screaming that same scream
for 23 years,
waking in the night seeing myself rot

I saw him again, years later and years ago.
I smiled, and shook his hand
and broke his arm on the sidewalk.
It didn't help.