lotuseaters

the limbless in the
curtained cots of
shivered blisterspit. So
many in the chalkline, so
many in detention, you want to
build a house for them. A heaven for
their tents. A made-for-hope of
numbness as
the tactic you have mastered as
the happy ending—it’s only
human feeling you control in
nightly buttons: that
red one—remote

as in background tasks when screens go black

while I idle
hallucinating

there’s a mushroom
cloudresembling
a diety toadstooling

between the sillpan and the slab
between the subfloor and the threshold

a navel
sprouting worldsinsideofworlds

a trickster
pretending to be oyster
mock
portobello
slippery
juliet

a fairy in the dome
sponging off the glut
surviving in the storm and drought

the only way out

no reflection

Wolves talk. A thousand rats
I wear the dividend of bats, opening to night’s
cold occupation. The tillandtamp
of every penny nickeled, every dime a habit
the math
the master-slave exactly

no allowance in
copper, obsidian
mercury’s amalgam
the master plan
far worse than being dead

I pay the ferry
poppy seeds and sand
the poorpuny flies to which we are attracted