you say an ocean separates us
from the real
then wade in me
let me drink from your broken glass
I level out in your waves
there's this need cramming me into an aquarium
I inhale you through a syphon
from a bubble of braided (h)air
I conjur you up
with a snap of a finger
hide under a microscope slide
and magnified stare into
the full-blown sail of nothingness
if happiness could be loosed from its prison
then I'd be your slave
and I'd don the stripes of metaphors
and see in your eyes
a runner in a stocking
an opening like a switch blade
split dully in your mind
finally I'll head for home
saving everything for the sander
but then where's the sand paper to make me smoother
or the saw grinding teeth in your absence
there's no fuse
guilt coils on itself
without a transformer
-why can't I put on a waterproof diving suit
to shoot into space
to bring up from the bottom of heaven
the miraculous shards of petrified poetry
what cabinets can't hold
try to keep an old elephant in a bird cage
teach it to play the trumpet
or better yet teach (man)ners
to a bird taking flight
clean shaven enervated breathless and bold
swamp fever without quinine
as in the days of old when three
Bedoins started for a safari
and the desert sigh ran wild in tight burnous
then came the camel
the oasis floating on its hump
its riot of hair nurtured by insidious canals
and the overcast sky
since you said there's an ocean
and a tornado and a cyclone
and a bora-bora and all will be leveled
I ask
is it your glance brightening
your voice greening and lilacs flowering
all over your face
under dew-damp leaves
what will happen when the ice melts
will grass grow in the Antarctic
in your heart
and I start out
following seven nuns in habit
not even a cloud