Listening when you tell me what I don't want to hear

My left ear offends my sense of universal balance
so i paint it red and staple one of my business cards
to it with the letter 'A' written with a big black sharpie.

The pain is marvelous, and I scream for the joy of
holey-ness -- the pits of bottomless despair through
cartilage, through flesh -- down to the toneless timpani
where words find meaning when my mind wanders.

The hordes and masses will masturbate along through
the partly cloudy days and call it work or vacation
whichever lie they hold in their left hand that morning

as I call out to them, "Maggots, Maggots, this breakfast
rots so deliciously, come and eat it up!"

They will crawl my legs, my torso, my neck, and soon
I will hear their mouths on my offending ear
eating away the jazz and the blood and bits of soul
that have seeped out of the infection around the staples.

Soon they will grow wings and fly away, fat and full
while I die, clean.