I was a child in a sentence, one that began simply before twisting into knowledge while I somehow remained ignorant as I wandered its terraces and trees, never guessing the flesh that might be contained in the maneuvers of doves and bees, all those dos and do nots humming over my head like a territorial tongue, does and stags at the lawn’s edge, and beyond a constrictor fencing me from farther on, a precarious phrase that seemed harmless, parenthetical to my existence, unheeded and unobserved, but all the time assuming that the world in all its complexity was something that could be understood.
You're Toast
Flask the tea to understand the throat. Gorge the river, flood and trickle, to know the flood–how we sighed as we floated from one great stiff to the next, rowing
from state to state, wasn’t this desire– this furious motion to forget the corpse? Tell me what you want, what you require, come to me, contain, which transport
to content? anxiety? Which are we about? Leaves sodden in their little bag, drink them down, even the frog leaves his bubbles of seed in the water, this is how love sounds
to the bridge, water enters the mouth, burbles into the belly and then out.
Placebo
Pansy of thought, muse-mary of remembrance, leaf the leaf or petal you trust as you rely on rust to dismiss iron, sic transit. The strangely akin, say the sun rising with cruciferous abandon cures the crucified, you’ve seen the crux-- lavender, dandelion, peppermint with its square stem, even the skeptic holds a bit beneath his tongue, and it speaks when he can’t believe, that sort of faith: fold this speck and slip it under your glass of water, sip, drink.
