As/Is







10.02.2004



Let it out; how? You should
crack open the top of my head like Gulliver's
egg and let sympathy for the feet of
ponies grazing on rain-fat grass tumble
out as a hundred startled pigeons cooing
and rustling keratinous feathers, the lot of them flapping
up and up an dup into the calm heated face of the
sun the sun reaching out to melt all
the wax in their wings so they fall

back to ponies with sore feet,
wrens moving one static frame at a time,
back where my hard diminished heart drops
to the earth, a pretty, polished, tumbled
ruby ejected from my closed and cagey
chest walked around by legs wishing only
to run away

to cartoon horizons bearing many-armed cactuses, cactuses
baring blushing fruit to a desert imagined
by me in hot terrifying dreams when I was four,
pounding sheets rough as seasalt
with undersized fists until I
woke to streetlights outlinining tree branches
in my window, a grey cat curled into
my sweating belly.