When Van Gogh cut off his ear
It was for reassurance that the rest of him could disappear

That illusion of ownership that nerves create
Should have faded with each baby tooth I lost
It didn't though, contrariwise I worried I would extend
Into roads or trees and then feel the tire's friction or the elm's blight

Empathy is a ***** of its own
I pray I never wake up with a Siamese twin
I'd have to care, lest we lapse into mutual sadomasochism
That hilarious territory of bored lovers

The Thalidomide kids might get a kick
out of feeling new arms attached to other people
but that's the exception that proves the rule

After the Vietnam war, some men believed Agent Orange
Had followed them home, alive in newly discovered nerves
Now what odd god must be behind that ****!

Mengele often awoke from dreams sweating and sure
That his patients would learn a trick to generate biological anesthetics
He needed the feedback of sound to really understand the human body
“Prayer or pleading” he used to say with a wink to his bartender after work

Sometimes I worry that my nervous system
Might have a Mengelian agenda of its own

That I am woven into a potential torture chamber seems clear
but then I remember that I can always pull the tooth or cut off the ear

How are you ever
Going to get out from under this?
It hunts with its nose
It is brave from lack of sleep

Onions, computers, red cabbage, loss
This tangle of things
Goes to sleep in a knot

Is that you in the picture?
Take as long as you please

Come around back now
Fierce and rambling, blasting a request
For mercy with an air horn
Pointing to an unspecified time and place

A leaflet addresses your problems
You lose your ability to use language
Thoughts stack up but cannot be forged
There is nothing to be afraid of

Are you scared Johnny Reb?
Yeah I guess I am too

With each re-enactment
The grey and the blues
Get under my skin
'til it's just me and you
In our animal colors
All black and bad news

Are you scared Johnny Reb?
'cause I've heard hunting men
Is just one hard ****, then again and again
It is joy past the point of all drugs and all zen

Let the next re-enactment
We enact again
Have the slightest addition
Of two powdered men

I've come to consider you
More than a friend
So honestly Johnny
Between us too men
Let the end of our war
Be decided again

I was hitchhiking in the cold
Cold so intense that I knew I could die
A car pulled over and I got in
I thanked the driver profusely
“It was the least I could do” he said

As I thawed into survivor's awe
I noticed the man was playing music I loved
He asked me casually about my life
And told me about his
“Why don't you drive for awhile?” he asked
“It's the least I can do” I playfully replied

He fell right to sleep
In a nimbus I drove and drove
The car purred and its leather grew softer and softer
I lost track of time

Near his destination, he dropped me off at a bus station
My bus arrived as he pulled away
Its seats were hard and small
The bus driver was a shockingly large woman
“So you got here in one piece” she said
She grinned, her teeth were huge and perfect
And then she pointed at the grin
“Addiction!” she roared “All Aboard!”

Even nothing heals
It ravels and unravels
Then coyly coils up into a bow
A present from the fringes of space

Waffling between hate and annoyance
At the lack of access to anything else to feel
A hot gust of flying ants and grass shrapnel
Is how you should picture this

My parents made love in the chimney
My brother wrecked Christmas
My cousin is stuck on Easter Island
Sometimes I see him on postcards screaming

It's the dust motes in the light
That cats love to bat and wonder at
Given each alone the mote or the light
They couldn't care less

So much is still waiting behind the right combination, right?

Along the sea floor
The choral beds your
Topology of dreams, sure
As any submarine lore

Between the blades of sun rays
An octopus parades
Happy in the shafts of light
It is not wrong or right to be an octopus tonight.

Morality

Getting high off other's deaths
Jerking off to artist's gore
Spurting up blood fountains
Like a breathless whale

Like a shy devil
Coming to a conclusion at last
To a clearing in the woods
Where the elephants lay

To swear off wishful thinking
To smear fresh remorse on old skin
To keep living vicariously
Precariously perched
Like the moon in a thunderstorm

With your cut Joker's smile
With your tiny hand on your heart
As if there was any difference at all
Between the merciful
And the merciless.

You cannot eat December
Though it tastes of candy canes
And a flavor I remember
As a flood of growing pains

You cannot trap September
Though you scheme and rack your brains
And most cages I remember
Were a flood of growing pains

You cannot trip November
Though you pump it through your veins
Where's the high that I remember?
In that flood of growing pains

Mickey Mouse

When Mickey Mouse comes home hungover
He throws up ice cold Coca-Cola

He lives in a spherical house in the sky
Which he enters and exits with telescopic stilts
Which grow or shrink with every step

He is a good vertical neighbor
I live just to the right of him down below

He always stops to say hello
Or to make me laugh with a joke or pose
(One time he even stole my nose)

Sometimes I get so mad at Mickey
That I take it out on my kid
And then spent, I wonder what Mickey did?

Molly has a rider! Molly has a rider!
All curled up and tucked inside her

Oh Molly, oh Molly what will you do?
With a fellow inside you, who just isn't you

Molly take cover, Molly get clear
Perhaps your new lover is causing your fear

Perhaps gentle Molly the life that you lead
Is vampire slang for the blood that you bleed

My Molly, my Molly, my enemy mine
Has dropped out and turned on inside of my mind

Alive behind eyes that were once mine alone
I have company watching from zones of its own

Ahh sweet love Calamity Jane
In rough girl hands your guns again

I miss the days of Lord Geoffrey Jane
The horse faced con-artist she smiles
I watched him sell a man the moon

That's how good that stallion was
******* most charming horse that ever lived

But I digress, Jane swears at the stars
And weaves away drunk
To drink at the bar

Ahh Jane, it's morning again
The old days are bled out
All bleached in the brain

We can only hope honey, for you
after war, to keep men alive
love, is all you live for

What are you doing right now?
You...who were always on the move
Or sleeping beautiful on my arm
You are a soft fox, sweet, and haunted
You are my dreamy fox, curling in her burrow, dreaming of princes
You chat happily and unafraid of the English in my arms
You, who named her young after the prey you raised them on
You, with her ****** muzzle that snapped at the moon's reflection in the water
Leaving a wake of blood and questions
Do hunters prove you are worth while?
They'll put bullets into you  to take your life
But they can only take you dead
 They will be confused and mourn their loss
And they will load their guns again

In the corner there is a little door in the wall
You jam your hand up inside me
Twisting around in my guts
I gasp and whisper “It isn't love”

So you fall upon me mad
As a bumble bee buzzing
Hungrily and desperately lost without flowers
In my huge eyes “It isn't love”

You twist my **** and bang loudly
Into the back of my throat
Watching my tears mixing with my makeup
And again and again “It isn't love”

I set up a set of windows

They were clear and lovely in panes

And all of the incoming birds coming in

Shouted their incoming names

Smash “I am Peter!”

Smash “I am John!”

Smash “I am Alice, and free!”

And love was the sound

Of hollow bones hitting ground

My new friends piling up at my feet.

High School

But we know don't we class?
The quiet ones and the kids at the back
The Morse nonsense of tapping chalk

The jocks seemed just off
One muscle in one place way too grown
A small sickness perhaps in nerves or in bone

I knew the story of how I got here
But not exactly how I did

There were very large mirrors in each bathroom
Some slightly convex some slightly concave
The exit signs contradicted each other
Some things just don't get along I suppose

At night my parents laughed and drank wine
They gave me a new nickname every week

“I'm going to high school!”  I said to a girl I knew
A pretty girl too, she vigorously nodded “Yes!”
Her perfume came off her in layers
Like she'd worn hundreds of different scents

In the smoking section everyone was silent
In the office was a grinning secretary
Some portables seemed too far away
And I couldn't ever remember my age

But that's how things are right?