It was an ostrich who asked me
to give stick my head in the ground.
He looked like what you think
an ostrich would look like, with his head in the dirt,
and the bright, pastel lights,
that come with things
from your imagination.
I colored him with crayon.
I could make rainbows with crayons back then.

I wish someone told me
what it meant, to get lost
in the dirt. I became a stray dog
digging all those holes.

I lived in a junkyard. The one on the side
of the highway next to the billboard
the Christians put up to help stop divorce that said
"Honey, Come home. The kids and I love you."
I slept in the back seat of a car with fleas
and ticks, stealing my food from a truck stop diner
until the day someone took the car away.
I had nowhere to go so I stopped
licking myself and left the junkyard to become the man
I am today. I got myself a job and started sitting
in the front seat. I even have a bed now with nothing

between me and the mattress but a sheet.
I have a taste for gin and girls who are buried
in borrowed wedding dresses.
I still lick myself sometimes because
old habits aren't easy things
to quit, like asking for extra
fortune cookies, hoping I will get something
good this time.


I shouldn't have been a man. I should have
been a bird, like the one who told me to
write stories in the dirt and whisper tales to the gnarled roots
of unnamed wild flowers. And never illustrate, he told me,

especially with crayon. You could get lost searching
for fortune at the tip of a crayon.

Oh the boo boos I have to kiss and make better
They are fallen ideas, cracks in the ceiling.
I'm thinking I shouldn't be here
in the 'Where am I in this?'
moment when I step back from the big picture
to look at the museum,
the street that I'm on,
and the nearest highway
that will take me to another town.
Which state am I in
when I drop down, step by step
towards the rose garden universe
with my list of wishes in hand
like I am going to
search for shooting stars
while I wait for the roof to cave in.

I want the children to stay silhouetted against the sun,
doing handstands, throwing their heads down and kicking
the cloudy, blue water.

They are silly children
with no fear of the fall and slipping shirts
that expose their human bellies.

They are spending time upside down
before the ground is lava and before they have to
check the sidewalks for cracks,
before they are tricked
into believing there is a secret underneath their feet
and they are greedy, greedy,
always looking down with limp arms and hunched shoulders.

They throw themselves over the ground
again and again. Not understanding
that their arms are too weak to keep their legs wading
against the current of gravity as
it pulses down on the Earth.

Or maybe they do know
and they are only trying to do handstands,
looking for a new perspective, a different world,
not the one they are stuck with.
They could be searching everywhere
for an alternative before they have to balance
on two feet and face the fear
that will rake in moments of their lives.

They already know that fear
but maybe trying anyways is what makes all the difference.
Perhaps everyone should go home right now
and designate handstand stations
in their living rooms,
throw open the windows,
and let the sunlight in
because it really is getting warmer
or maybe we're all just getting
used to the cold.

My superstitions are pH balanced,
like the apple pickers
and the gardeners with their
fingers entwined in the language
of the landscape, organic and fresh.

But the label says it's going
to happen. Dark, rich life will fall
from the roots of the tree that’s been cajoled
from its nest and perlite, a fool’s gold, will sprinkle
into worshipping hands.

We will stand on that soil and call it a revolution
asking for wonder drugs, stirring them into a cup of good day Earth.
Starving in sleep I will drink from that brew and
my eyes will open to the naked alarm clock.

Coming in from the cold, our frosted breaths will remind us that
at any breeze we could be blown from this rock.

I imagine myself talking to you often
enough to think it were an obsession, the idea of
you and I exchanging pleasantries,
the kinds felt in the marrow of my fore arm bones
and maybe even my thigh bones,
sometimes we are that good,
shaking the foundation which I balance on,

like when you told me I am going to die young
preserved in a classic pose with pearls in my ears
and a straight back. A slightly older, classier version of myself
I imagine. She drinks red wine and sits alone under blankets,
still having conversations with you on a lost frequency,
She waits for the light to fade, to wrap itself around her old human body,
for the light to take her with it when it disappears.

Already I am pulling at myself
like any breeding animal with the
instinct to be a selfish mother,
Wondering if I let go and abandon
this shell in a watered down suicide
will I have more time on this Earth?
Or will they say at my wake,
huddled in traumatized circles,
after they've read my life and figured me out,
she was obsessed with death for a while
instead of she was impressed
    with the brevity of life?

A dog with an unequaled appetite lies
at my feet in my sisters bed. I wonder where

she hides her scars, the lucky four footed *****.
The wrecking ball of caged months has hurt

her, but where is her pain? There is no book
I can pour my breath over to sing to me

her misgivings through a flowered microphone
which I cradle in my palm. I could have learned

from her, how to hide it under my fur, pretending
history never happened. Instead I found out for myself

what whiskey does to me, besides burn
my throat and leave ashes that

drum against the corners of my voice where
an ex lover vibrates. We tip over bottles and share

secrets, turning back clocks and calendars. He was cut
from the unfortunate occupation of his father.

My hand is heavy with the weight
of my childhood. When old affections melt

into trash and I drop it, letting it fall
to the floor without bothering to pick it up and

instead I rush into the future where I pray
flesh is pink and whole and healed

in a flowered bed with a dream catcher hanging
above the headboard. I say to my sisters dog

who has secrets of her own beneath her old skin--
skin that has seen the horizons of places

I will never know--"I was fat when I was a kid"
She looks at me with one bleeding eye.

"No you weren't," she says and
blood doesn't lie.