Blood Test

The twelve-inch needle stuck deep,
with my thinning skin sucked around it
as if deflating,
trapping the silver sheen of icy steel
beneath a flimsy paper of flesh,
mortified with scraps of heavy crust-ridged cuts
and burns like pools still oozing,
spewing slimy moisture like a split sewage pipe.
My blood lurked far beneath that soil of volcanic skin,
and so the thick and prying pin tip
was plunged in to the river-veins of my hip.
The scratcher tore up pale craters from the cutis,
pulsed humming pains from hip to hand to foot-
yet still my boiling cruor stayed its course,
that latent brook still babbling,
triumphant beneath the surface.