The Interchange/ Little Boy on a Prairie

The Interchange

Where are the angels to pick me up
and drop me down?
All hollow.  Now, like a marble sound
clunking around in my fishbowl home,
where I struggle to swim. I reach out
and lose touch in soft spaces of mist,
where water departs for virgin
births that come about in those places
that summon me and disturb the water.
I am pulled by the throat,
and when I scream for release
I only choke and spittle out words that
jumble together like planets,
or atoms converging with atoms
and I wonder what if at the end of the trip,
the pieces don't fit,
and none of the Queen's men
can put me back together again?
Perfection is the interchange
of gold and grey.
"Awake" they say. 
"You haven't the toll to pay."

I rise from sticky wombs
and sheets of sleepy cocoons.
Contemplating, coughing,
Dreaming, not talking.
Our souls are dim and wearing thin,
and we are grateful of our maker
until the day comes that forgets to begin.
Our Lord, the Father, the mover and shaker.




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Little Girl on a Prairie

Like raindrops falling on inner thighs
and dusk-heat and fire form seeds from sighs
And somewhere someone else’s tears flood
Insect homes with earth, pus and mud.
I imagine their ghosts glide through her burs
And into the sky.  Floating, fallen timbers
from heaven and hell brush my eyelash
still, and swoon and taste candy ashes.
And I imagine she falls for the other
in all her feat to function as a brother
for the girl weeping still. On her chain swing still.
And grieves for the ants who died in their stream at will.
And I imagine she must have loved all of them,
So I plucked the Lilly and examined only the stem.