All in now,
admitting

to being a big bad
boomer with a
bawdy voice,

callout captain,
dwelling dimmer,
electric eel tongue
flung free,
gagging on the gape
of my own mouth…

sharp and flat
applied as necessary…

They didn’t give me
this name for nothing —

bastard.
Bastard!

I didn’t know my father,
my mother never knew me,
so I’ve made myself up as I went along —
music to my own ears,
note on my note,
strung up and burning open or closed,
roar of child fantasy of power in my vein,

you’d better hope I never come into my own
interrupted passions
and longing —

my head rolling off my shoulders,
my body caked with sweat and dirt like fur,
no longer quite human but geographic,
my own country, my own continent,

and pray that you don’t live here when that happens…

for I’m hungry,
I sing my hunger,

and you look like nothing but a meal.

What I most desire

is the meat of a lion
and a fork smeared with hemlock
to spear it with,

to raise courage
and a hint of poison
to my lips
at once.

But with what shall I wash it down?

There is currently
the juice of an artist’s suicide
in my cup.

If I want that certainty,
I am a fool —
and I am no fool.

There is water,
but I don’t want water.
There is beer,
but I don’t want beer.

Perhaps I shall choke down the meal
with no drink at all,
feel it roughen my throat
and sicken me slightly
even as I grow strong
and brave.

Perhaps the lion
died feelingthat way,
the spear that killed him
erupting through his middle
even as he turned to fight
that which had hunted him
even as he hunted,

becoming (even as he ceased)
fully
lion.

I would not call this being awake.

I can see the trash on the curb where I stacked it last night,
the fanblades are coating me in hot but moving air,
I’m hungry, the coffee came out pretty decent for once,
but I’m still not sure anyone would say
this is waking life

for I’m not yet free of last night’s dreams,
or even the ones from the day before;
I still feel the laughter of the circle of flashing men,
hear the vulgar songs, the blade of the guillotine
whistling down along its path of rough wood.
The silver warrior birds and the dolls with cracked faces
may not be visible, but I feel them in the room.

If this is being awake,
conscious
in this world and of this world,

I will return to sleep at once
and face what waits there,
get it truly over with

or learn that world
and live there.

Something must happen soon
to hook me into the present,

or I will not leave the shadows
today.