Bruce McRae
Cat Scan
This machine will turn you inside-out.
They’ll explore your inner jungles,
steamy and Ireland-green, the animals within
complaining of our presence.
Harnessing solar frequencies,
they’ll shine a light clean through you,
exposing your innards, its map
of bile and bones, your waterworks,
the seed of all corruption.
Here’s that rat nest of a heart.
Here’s a tangled soul
and mind like a pirate’s treasure.
People you don’t know
will be studying your handsome wreckage,
its clews and abandoned temples,
the treehouse of your abdomen,
that brain of soggy newspapers,
all the junk drawers and moist crevasses.
They won’t know what it is
they’ll be looking for until they find it —
perhaps a dead end street
or the source of all time.
Perhaps a life’s dark houses.
Other work by Bruce McRae