Animals Elsewhere

 

For the looks I like to say

more or less in cartoon bubbles,

so many poets of the day

pause their flashlight eyes

like tin can soldiers,

rows of smiling women & ask,

If the devil be a gentleman, how

are you in this killing condition?

If yes, then say:  you are very

like love too.

 

With horns, my brother goes to pot

on his wiry way,

a kinder ivy,

a giving tendril of smiling nooses

that startle the animals elsewhere in us

& remember the pink of tickle

under your chin

tasting of stolen kiwi flesh now living.

 

Labyrinths of vanilla

lamplight guide us,

border crossing bodies of bones

of believers in heat,

of what to do anymore,

of when to want                       

completely.

 

Cornflowers in summer. 

The smell of orange blossoms.

Muffled coo songs pushing up

through feathered down earth. 

I wish to touch the yellow

underbelly of bee-like worlds colliding.

 

 

 

                       

Me for Someone

 

Maybe my handsewn soul on a magic carpet ride

is only masking her sparks, Snake Rattler—

but please do not mistake me for someone with

a burning kind of power—I offer the scent instead

of moonshine on behalf of the person who means

a milder Christ that our inner eyes invite

 

Through the window rolled down, or maybe I’m a heart

adrift in this truer blue triangle sending out letters

to an unscheduled draft of war on gay or old or backwoods

brothers, or maybe the hole in my planet is a mother

kangaroo with open pouch and avocado handouts

for the one who listens to mountains in the background