Does love start with the self?
        loving it enough to let it choke
        gulping sweet air into its lungs
Or does it begin with conception?
        finding yourself inside  
        the cavernous pupil of a lover
        always one degree and two lips
        of separation between you
        and yourself
        with embryonic love
        growing in the fleshy matrix.

How many poems
begin with "I fear"?
That's what drives us
as poets
as beings
to create, to be
Something--
that fear of Nothing.

I fear my only happiness comes from waiting.
Anticipating.
Shifting shapes inside my head
Contorting proportions
to get what I want.
Contentment stems
from reality and expectation
extending hands
in a gravitational relation.
But what happens when reality is really
inside the mind?
--in line with slimy fascination
Is the happiness I find
Real or pseudo shine?
Does my neck hold a head
Or a noose
whole?

Because insanity is just playing
the same game
expecting there's something new
to gain
--besides the pain of an empty
plane
backed up inside
a spinal drain,
spiraling down
an icy vein.
Insane, I tell you--
though I'm the only one
calling my name.

Out of everything I saw, I remember
the thumb.
Swollen and lopsided.
There it was, conquering the wires--red, blue, and green,
commandeering the clear tubes coated with stomach bile.
And the nail. What a healthy nail.
A pink rosebud with cuticle trim. Piqued with a white crest, curling.
Prime for at least fifteen more back scratches.
A drawerful of button-ups.
Pockets of heads and tails.
You can do it, Grandma.
One, two.
Heads, tails.
Up, down.
Up for braid, down for bun.
Braid? Yes. Braid.
And then there are two small thumbs bumbling through foreign terrain.
The braidee now braiding. The baby,
aging.
Tucked in, lulled by echoes of strange mothers. Bleeping pressures, sugars, drawing lines and colors.

But you have me.
And I have this thumb,
hidden under mine.
I’ll keep it safe for you, here in this shadowed palm—sanctified, secret dome.
I’ll protect it from the unhooked jaw.
From placid flesh curtains, over a damp backstage.
White light hanging over the insect—splayed on a lightning-gleamed car windshield.
I’ll hide it away.
Intermission.
Hush now.
Quiet, you. The show is not yet done.
And ******, it won’t be. Not with this thumb.
Not on my time.

I bite it.
At you. Skyward you.
Elusive and slippery. Shiny, rubber-like, all but new.
A blank belated card, lost in the mail.
What it might have said,
had I left a forwarding address.

But we’re here now in this dark hand cavern.
Tucked away, safely in lines.
Those of the palm.
Of tree rings.
Of love songs, and
Pretty things.
Lines, like wires
red, green, and blue.
They bring me closer
And closer
To the thumb.
Fat, with shiny aged skin,
stretched new.
And suddenly, I’m
Old.
Numb along one side.
Useless and dumb.
A limp puppet
plunked down
during intermission.

Let us start with a piece of linen
Crisp, white, laundered
Its value lies in golden tendrils
simultaneously probing all
its geometric possibilities:

A cotton skirt, twirling, unfurling
on late April grass,
stretching itself just enough
to graze fingertips.
Making arms around a young groom
Snuggling closer under the heavy suit.
A child's plaything--smiling, pretending,
waiting.
Or maybe it's just this tattered sheet
the only thing between me and the bleak
pitter patter
drumming sonic shapes
on my windowsill