I
This one,
a common type,
turns in.
Was once attached.
Fed me as sweetly
as an opium pipe.
O birthdays unlimber us,
eyes sit back,
ears go indoors
but here nothing changes.
This was.
This is.
2
Mostly they lie low
put up shells, sprout hairs
and if they sing, they know
only leather cares.
Blind marchers five abreast
left, right
silent as mushrooms or puff paste
they rise up free at night.
3
I have a life of my own
he says. He is transformed
without benefit of bone.
I will burrow, he says,
and enters. Afterwards
he goes slack as a slug.
He remembers little.
The prince is again a frog.
4
Here is a field that never lies fallow.
Sweat waters it, nails hoe the roots.
Every day death comes in with the winnow.
Every day newborns crop up like asparagus.
At night, all night on the pillow
you can hear the narrow sprouts crackle
rubbing against each other,
lying closer than lemmings.
They speak to their outposts in armpits.
They speak to their settlers in crotches.
Neighbor, neighbor, they murmur.
5
They have eyes that see not.
They straddle the valley of wishes.
Their hills make their own rules.
Among them are bobbers
melons, fishes
doorknobs and spools.
At times they whisper, touch me.
6
Imagine a mouth
without you, pink man,
goodfellow.
A house
without a kitchen,
a fishless ocean.
No way to swallow.
7
These nubbins
these hangers-on
hear naught.
Wise men
tug them in thought.
Lovers
may nibble each other’s.
Maidens
gypsies and peasants
make holes in theirs
to hang presents.
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