Do you laugh with amphibians,
share the secrets snails whisper
in the dark?
Are your fingers long and slender?

Come, don't wait.
Tomorrow may be too late.

Send me tiny spiders
crawling over my skin like eyes.
Send me dry-skinned snakes,
blind, I will make them see.
Send me your name,
send me your number.

Receive in reply
coyote murmurs,
the lingering smile of a turtle,
possum probabilities.

Little spider
hanging in my parlour
who said you could slide down from my ceiling?
The sudden shock of meeting you
caused my eyes to cross
and my feet to stumble,
but it set my mind to wondering
at the nimble leg-magic
you use to weave your web.
No matter;
I crushed you in a crumpled up tissue
anyway.

In the air, floating just next to the window
solidly constructed
as sure as the golden highway
stretching from Frisco across the Bay
looking square
as the acres of boxcars
north on the interstate
on the south side of Chicago,
it's all atoms...

This morning my son postulated to me a so-far unrealized condition
relating to matter transmitters and, probably, hyperspace. "What
would happen, " he asked, "if some guy transported himself inside a big rock?"
Indeed.
Putting on my ears, I considered the situation.  Would the hypothetical solid mass of rock give way, shudder just enough to allow the insertion of a soft, squishy human being?  Or would the spaces in their respective atoms--rock's and human's--intermesh neatly with each other?  Molecular integration?  But such a challenge to the atomic bonds holding the things together might result in a nasty atomic accident. Would that leave a human-shaped void inside the solid rock, a mold exact down to the finest details of skin texture and even eyelashes? Imagine the crystal-filled waters seeping down to find such a hole--Behold!! Geode Man.

Holding my silver pen extended
like a rapier before me,
I dissect the wispy chunks
of smoke. The balance of air
that gave them form
is destroyed.  They are
no more.

Look--
It's waiting...
Over there, in the corner,
in the shadows...
It's patiently waiting
to tear you apart,
gobble up your liver,
devour your heart...
Look--
It's waiting.
You can stand where you are,
rot where you are,
wait until your hair goes grey
then white from the fear
and it will still be waiting.
You can't escape
as long as it's waiting.
Look--
It's waiting.

I saw my mother's face today
when I looked into the mirror.
Been wondering for a long time
what happened to her.

The morning begins with another bottle. Her
broken mirror has already spoken its lies,
crucified her  with a stranger's face invading
her bathroom.
Later
the stairwell does not echo her footseps
as she descends, carefully, one foot, then the other,
the exact placement of each step thoughtfully
considered, planned out and
executed with a grace that is almost
Procrustean.
She leaves no shadow behind herself, throws
away words into the deep green silence.
They fall.
I could get a job, she tells herself,
listening to the silence of her footsteps.
I could blunt the stings of honeybees,
gather the nectar of drones.
Her feet sink into the softness of the stairsteps.
At the bottom, she opens the locked door of the mailbox
hugs junkmail to her breast.
Her fingers leak tiny drops of blood
over the sealed envelopes. Her mouth
is full of dust. She eats her memories.

There have been a lot of temporary alterations
of the temporal continuum
and reality has been revealed
as plastic
pliable
thoroughly without
a concrete infrastructure
so when I saw peacocks in the tomato patch
I didn't worry too much about it.