I feel so forensic in the arms of my john.
Even the reticent casket wants a corpse.
My thighs to veer like traintracks.
The summer haze, its milkbone horse,
hangs against the cracked window,
as words linger like earwax on the tongue.
The sun-moon in its pig exhibition
sits over the clouds, a bust
commemorating a celebration of liberty.
The doors that dot the hall, as if shuffled
into losing hands, stand tattooed
with the gone-fishing smell of faith.
The plastic flowers on the nightstand,
next to the removed Bible, supervise
like eternity—who are they to disapprove?
The business suit blazer on the floor,
concerto for the camels of midnight
that never really disappear.
The squirrells of urban sprawl, chuckling
like Jiffy Pop. One comes to know
the idiot savants of neck-tie masturbation,
the way boomerangs murmur
the way and back through the ticking fields,
where spit curls like weathered stone
and the arrowheads of the wind
fling themselves at the pigs
of remembrance, at camels gone by.
But you don’t automatically forget what the harbor
of Palos has meant to the pathos
of the sea’s salty, milk-skinned boys.
You don’t automatically forget the milkbone horse
with its horseshoes and buckteeth
as it files its clumsy valentine away in your heart-shaped box.
