“Spring is a wickedness in me.”
–Robert Frost
Hi, electric night! Hi!
Hi, neo-starring streetlight!
Trip along toward the sinking!
Wave and be good at things!
Wave and think of beaches!
I’m mostly floating,
mostly a cloud shape, piglet colors—
trotter, snout, bell and song,
mostly curtain call, royal smoke, and thinking
about resurrection suspensions
—people say you’re warm and pain is
like a face you once saw flicker, in a city
you learned in Braille
and lost.
Mostly I’m skipping on a grassy world.
Mostly this derivative:
crutches dropped, oil painting
dripping, song queued,
and dance—that dance!
Oh, mayhem! Oh, sailing cloud-ships,
dropping anchor, sails all full of dreamers!
Oh, peripheral vision, in which,
waltz, waltz, foxtrot, waltz
a silver-pieced game is being played,
face tilted, full of my hugging, full and filling
me in sidelong looks, attention-seeker, moving
one coy piece and back again, heel-toe,
heel-toe, traipsing, yes, in confession:
Misdirecting, very.
And the next night,
though dressed and ready,
cobbled of star-matter and new-heeled boots and
tangible as moonshine, bouillabaisse—
here I descend and know the names,
each tongue of flame above them burning,
air, a room made gold and still,
a dreamed toy, a run and leap
from this soil to that of water vapor,
bird minutes, soot from cities of men.
Here, questions are monarchs
on a million branches, breathing
with their wings. Here I am, zither
and piglet, ears turning pink,
tune and hum.
And I’m singing.
Full of hugging, full of flying ash,
microbrews, embattled novae, and singing,
begging coins for visions:
Chinese Foxglove: Ascending heart fire.
Lotus Seed: Anxiety.
Cinnabar: Snakebite
But, the novelist knows,
It can’t be helped.
And the stars and the cars and the barmen,
and the big red room, and all its starring caricatures,
mark, and laugh, and watch the comet fall.