This is a conversation I had with God.
In which I told the silence of my room
that surrealism is the only ism in which God makes total sense.
I could see the chalk whites of his teeth trying to bite down on his words
but before they could be derailed his tongue caught wind and his words assailed
as he said, "I hate surrealism."
As if his words would never be caught dead in an urn
sometimes his mouth looked more like a jail in an Old Western
and his thoughts fought like criminals desperate to break out
until they finally found a way to use his tongue as an escape route.
"No, I don't hate surrealism," he says
"I just hate surrealism as a movement."
Upon hearing this my spine coils like a wine-corker-spiral-staircase
upward; where my brain plugs my cranium like a cork
and my eyes drip like blank canvas,
I am one hollow statue decaying in a melting structure
with wax in my ears I feed landscapes to winged insects
as I drown in pools of water/color.
Behind me is a sky so burlesque it actually looks like the clouds are crying.
Under me is a ground so vast it has nine horizons wrapped in a double helix.
Reconstructed beside me is a tree so old it could be the same wood as The Crucifix.
Nested inside me where my spine should be is a coat rack made crooked by the weight of all-nighters.
The texture of my skin makes it look like god paints with typewriters.
"No, no," he says, his voice turning melancholy, atomic, uranic, idyll,
"I don't hate surrealism as a movement,
because hate's such a strong word. Oh god, I guess I just don't get it."
Now I'm overcome with a sincere desire to light an entire herd of giraffes on fire
and sip wine beneath the light as if it were dinner by candlelight,
"Seriously?" I say. "Under giraffes, in this light
I can't tell if you're Lincoln or Jesus.
In fact, we all look like swans with elephant reflections.
Your trunk is a trumpet.
Don't even get me started on where we derive our visions of god
from where I stand everything casts a shadow in the shape of where it's heading
and the sky, vast and pale and open, the sky is the only all-seer
and the truth is far less surreal:
if your demons are ants then your god is an anteater."
I can see the chalk whites of his teeth stall door,
squeaky hinge, his mouth-
occupied with a realization he can't pronounce.
A pause as pregnant as a desert landscape,
ornamented with butterflies.
His head is an empty room with an evaporating skylight,
his ears, hang like clocks on a half-wall, melting.
The escalator to his brain is a spiral staircase moving in reverse.
His eyelids peel back like the last page of a two-dimensional book.
I can see with my Spellbound eyes, we are finally on the same page.
When his tongue curls back into his saloon jaw
like a bee sting rifle shot back into the mouth of a lunging tiger,
swallowed deep into the wells of a fish belly.
"I'm sorry" he says, "that's not what I meant."
