Boneyard Backtalk

lifted the coffin’s eyelid a stitch
just to see if I were still alive
so far so good
although you never know
to what madcap retreats
an unexpected catnap might take you

as you feel your lids closing
try to remember to bring your eyes with you
when skimming over the cusps of waves
or gliding past a field of munching farm animals
never know when a gaucho might suddenly
throw a lasso around your squawking neck
and you’ll be forced to admit
you were never quite human

so kick me if you see a hoof
breaking through the toe of my shoe
or a panther’s paw clawing
out of my sleeping hand
who hasn’t glimpsed upon occasion
the gigantic head of a common housefly
staring at him in the bathroom mirror

who hasn’t inhabited another body
while still living in this one
who hasn’t wondered where to place the cut
between self and other
the deep divide holds us in its hands
fragments of faces strain at the peepholes
to see through these watery eyes

one hears the snapping of fingers
the talking hand that speaks to you
when no one is home
psychic rhizomes snake through restless
folds of sleep where you hide the life
you can’t control in the hollow of a tree

remember me I’m the one
who climbs out of his skin
leaving footprints in the mud
look again I’m the one taking dictation
from snatches of conversation heard
through the walls that mean
absolutely nothing and everything
depending upon your need to know

words circle me like birds of prey
if I hear precisely what they say
it means I’m dead
that’s the game isn’t it
or are the living and the dead tumbling
down the same delirious rabbit hole

why listen to shouts of the townspeople
brandishing burning torches
I’ve been here before when another me
wakes up with a feverish itch
to sink his teeth into the unthinkable
I swear on my mother’s grave
I am not a vampire
turning over in his coffin
this is me
just trying to get another angle
on what it means to be human

to inhale the dry breath of a cactus
and exhale a sky-blue river of silk
flowing through a lover’s veins
this is us dancing in a flutter of flames

this is breathing you in and me out
swimming with atoms of thought
through the coffin that blinks
open and shut for the billionth time

Cannibal Soup

my child’s mind eats
little animals floating
on an ocean of cannibal soup
you call this a body
you call this a brain
standing under a red dunce cap
in the corner

no place is unknown
if you look close enough
columbus deduced a new world
from coffee stains on his carpet

deep sea monsters and mermaid flippers
celestial maps growing tentacles
arms and legs of close friends
and mortal enemies morph into
blinking constellations

the celebrated self no more
than a can of holes
watering the enormous space between
atoms and planets that talk back
like voices in my palm
like somnambulist sentences
that bleed through me
but nothing sticks

perhaps my playdough body
is rolled too thin
to find myself within the words
that ricochet off rivers and mountains
tables and chairs the distance pulled
back and forth on a string
between my thumb and the scar tissue
left on a drunken moon

You Know the Drill

one day squats upon another
hatching a totem pole of mumbling skulls
years wander like slow clouds
across her sleeping face

the clues are everywhere
the ring on your finger
the discolored wallpaper
that’s why you can’t see them
too absurdly obvious
or tantalizingly obscure

how do you shake the game
that picks your brain
at each moment a hurricane rages
inside the petals of a rose
too bad you’ll never know
the little you
blooming in another’s head

instead you find yourself following
the murderer you saw in a dream
the one with knives in his eyes
who gets lost in a crowd spinning
through revolving doors
you catch a glimpse of his hat falling
as he turns down a winding corridor

pick it up put it on — perfect fit
walking back through revolving doors
you sense someone following you
turn around and the crowd rushes past

we’re not alone
nor are we really here

Face Off

maybe I’ve come too close
to her rolling hips
the cave of her left nostril
and trembling lower lip
to tell a planet from a pebble
her pupil from paper numbers
swirling down a black hole

perhaps I’ve lost her to her parts
or they’ve become my parts
who talks and who listens
which mouth whose ear

I’m here somewhere
in the cosmic footprint of a dummy
drawn and quartered
the coordinates’ mournful call
give me back my arms and legs
my head my hat

I’m leaving from the inside out
across my widow’s peak to an entangled
particle spinning light years away
but oh so close I can almost hear
her talking in my sleep

the beast dressed in antlers and smoke
clings to the scales on my back
indifferent to chaos to death at our heels
the opening and closing
of the unknown with each breath
now I see it now I don’t