I got myself so smart, America,
I was well heeled and oiled
in the Smithsonian—
they serve your tea in tiny glass
cups and dust mites
enter your eyes. I say I am that
dust mite, I go
through the cosmos’ hallways,
finger the stalks of your dreams,
wear my rabbit tie and tree hat
to your tweed reception,
I light the water fuselage
of one of us on fire wracked
with the killer intent, the husband less
for the other expected,
and we can’t discern whose large bowel
is laced between which fingers,
what courage in place
of the Caligula-intent
renders me controlled
but not his own cure-in-diagnosis.
This health of tried-and-true,
of how we just motto our way
from front to backdoor planet
without going around adds men
to the bedroom drift cocooned
in his female filament. She is thick,
cotton, absorbent absence side-saddled.
Later the geese surround our home,
death dreamers sleep closer, Medusa
and Robert Frank focus my face
in a clock of flames, a peacock
on the verge of lake ministries,
a wet elbow that knocks
door hinges from the cock-block’s frame
that I am too helpless or complain
with a tuxedo energy: mine, yours,
the secrecy of the same cricket stings
the white bee on her back
into a scorpion who wants only
to break bread in August and death again
turns the knob, and he beats that horse
to the neighbor of death
where we sit, sup and watch
an angel’s switchblade stand guard.
This isn’t a room of one atmosphere.
This isn’t a room in the vein of Alice Neel.
This solitude isn’t question
or vertigo walking
the eyes of the passengers here now.
This is one long echo through
the pilgrims’ entrails;
they shave the sun, but I never wanted
a man to do those things,
to ask me about peripheral vision
or slide against
the layers of his skeleton.
These same rugged bodies drag a sea
of talking heads on the ropes of veins
between us chanting,
chatting, chattering the long dried bones
of graves, the mouth sounds
brittle cracks dust up with
a tender step
to frontier in all
foreseeable directions,
the burning bush as in
no such thing but
the burnt-out basements,
bombs and we preying
mantis youth fuck once
and die long lives,
these horse skeletons singing
wind through the cartilage
of our dark damp skin.