Poem
Help! the woods are full and teeming with critters and I am one of them,
I’ve got twenty jointed-digits and a set of eyes in a pair of warm baths.
Like drains, they circle timidly and then with greater force, boy these eyes can suck! Then I check and I’ve got a nose with openings, can you believe,
I’m an overstuffed coconut with holes, ready to be de-juiced!
Words are coming out with alarming rapidity; I feel bloated,
I’m concerned something will fall out,
my eyelids are vacillating up and down like punch-drunk tweezers on spring break.
With all these parts, couture’s really evolved since the hegemony of the amoeba.
Hey, wouldn’t it be great if all creatures could be slapped together with the
imprecise clack of a typewriter?
Then I realize, I’m a cool 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit—that means I’m raw!
Now I’m nervous I’ll catch salmonella, I’d be cooked then!
But I’m not cooked,
am I?
I’m not chilly and slick like a cucumber
I’m not steaming and self-assured like a Porterhouse
I’m not polypsy like an ear of corn
I’m not bubbly and transparent like a glass of champagne.
I’d like my soul to be an unbuttoned pair of pants: alluring enough, perched on a moment that’s both before and after; deliberate, careful and dishabille.
I’d like my soul to be the sort of thing you have to practice for a couple years.
Maybe I’m a bowl of ceviche, neither raw nor cooked,
sour sometimes,
persistently celebratory,
and sometimes occasioning puckered lips.
