Blood gets transfused into my veins
From a bag which from the ceiling hangs;
Some pipettes from the bottom run
Like legs with someone else’s blood.

So the maroon cephalopod
Floats from the pole it’s fastened on;
Staved by a hook, it makes a squid,
Who slowly bleeds out drip by drip;
I lay below the drying fish
Of plastic bag with blood in it.

What is blood, but such basic stuff,
But blood’s exactly what I’ve lost.
It’s said to be black, and yet it glows;
My face is pale; the blood is cold;
On the envelope there’s a fine
Condensation now like deathly rime.
Between it’s last and current owner,
It lived in a refrigerator.

The liquid void with reddish tinge
Empties into my empty veins,
For the cuttlefish of all my guts
Would just as soon be too dried up.
The blood belonged to someone else,
Which now I’m using for myself;
And so I drain of all its blood
Some other helpless animal.

Like in times of war and poverty
A man is seen desperately
To follow a cart hauling deceased,
But still fully dressed soldiery,
Trying hard to pluck away some boots,
Which dead men can’t but he could use;
I could just die from something like
Exposed feet on a cold, cold night;
And yet there’s something villainous
When poaching becomes necessitous.
I would have given up, it’s just
Getting help hurts so much less.

So man’s always engaged in heist,
Ignoble and Treasure Island-like;
Spermaceti and ambergris;
Fantastic corpse-culled ivory;
All giants heaving their last breath;
Proverbial father, stolen bread;
O! Life’s most fabled jewels and scents;
Fabled crimes, preventable deaths!