A WISH
That sleep I spent the day with you
I turned to you and you turned to
a girl version verging on me of you
told me he never wants to see you again.
But the next day I found your waking name
startling a dark and institutionalized corner
of an Idaho storage closet.
Again and again will men
slay me with indifference.
Slay me with indifference!
That white scuddish puff — poison
us, wildflower!
And I, in turn, blue.
And diffuse in the killing interval, invisible
if-valence, in the difference.
Estranger and estranger.
Tell me which sign was stronger?
Since held at a distance is still held,
is held still,
then to never see your unfeeling
or your unhands again would be freedom!
AFTER SOLSTICE, GRAY NOON AT SNOWMELT
The stream down by the house
runs clear over big mud on the bottom.
If big mud were littler it’d
carry mud on its shoulders —
head of the water held above water.
Right and above somebody’s strung
up a house
cat on the lectric fence.
Can’t even tell what color
fur was for mud.
But a furled fangbit of jawbone’ll float
little on the surface, persistent-like, like
a headthot only a child would poke,
or farmer remove from road’s shoulder.
TWO ELEPHANTS
well into the cave,
the temple, the elephant —
a swell against
what his ass ate up —
the basalt wall he was.
I gave him my cockthick brown
treehouse seed, his snaky
trunk up-gulpd peristaltic it.
then sqeezd the seed, the bolus
brownd down and exited
it by the opp-nos-tril-in
like the oddlong pit
of a suckt nearly-clean nectarine —
glumpt, it was
fructified or fortied by
his mucus. don’t let
it grow taller than
I am, he said.
sometimes when the chatterings brilliant
I’m talking trying to I can
feel the thick imbecilic literally
brain-tree wither and de-dendritic.
and gray as a microwavd cloud
I am so stupid
inflex and merrickle as
not like lightning bottles boil
oh my god and fail
massively massively
across the foggy awkward
and that, too
is like an elephant.