I am the Tiger Balm

Worry is a thick cloud
of insects circling every square
centimeter of air. Thinking, I fall
off the rock and twist into new life.
Flame-torn, orange-edged cigarette burns expand
until my whole face is eye-blacked bright black, a Mandalay overlay.
Stripes of orange blossom and cinnamon drift
but there’s always meat underneath.
On all fours, I have a tiger
foreleg and paw – orange melting to white –
limbs that flash, phantoms grinding grass.
The potion of footpad and claw releases
the oldest odor in the world, a fourth essence 
aria of hot music at noon.
The balm expands and the eye black cracks from the sun 
inside me. Floats break off from the parade of humidity
and pulse down my tar-marbled neck 
on this one-way, wood-grain walk through the thicket.
Heat tightens my thoughts to one thing.
I listen for the rip of a deeper language through my throat,
denying the true slink of myself in the wilds
of myself. I taste with my tongue, open-mouthed, and inhale
a white feather. One tusk of it detaches, falls,
and rests as sustenance in my left lung.
I feel it when I breathe between the dark vines, blind 
but for the white thumbprint eye behind each ear.
My tail watches back there, green and undulant as a cobra.

Kill anything in your way.