aware of the dark body , a gelatin shadow 'mong lights sporadically sourced
like stars with their backs to us, like squirrels w/ white laser eyes
occasionally a tree exhales, occasionally too many branches
for anything to fly through, not enough leaves to empty rains pockets
I smell lemon though its january
butterflies daylight at 1AM
forest of brownian dancers clothed in moss & unraveled flight
the wind speaks the cutesy voice we use for infants & kittens
how 5 inches changes everything—half a head, gravitic multiplication,
another tree without tracks, a banana skin filed with blazing butter light
faster than its own name in a thunderstorm of adjectives
open the flesh to free the salt—last week the clouds were celibate O
tomorrow begins in lush green smog
hunkering into an afternoon brown I wish my skin was
lunar rain brining another night on the grill
close the door so it wont want to open again.
fondle the shingles til they sigh their own damp,
I follow the birds til they ask "what do you want"
one woman thought my hands were calloused from labor,
another thought my hands were too big to be mine,
I leave the sixth fingers at home, gloves with thumbs in the middle
like masonic eyes above the pyramid my body makes sinking into itself,
walls dappled with errors & aliens, the many ways to make light digestible,
to map a balanced diet among my 7 mouths, my single continent
the ocean peristalses through, unscheduled lakes requiring amphibity
and gifts for the whirlpools from bottom dwellers dreams,
as each planet is a single catfish insatiable in its heart
when midnight is the hottest part of day we race at noon the abandoned streets
I make an exoskeleton of tools, some family some stolen;
I have a 3rd eyes always moving, equally repulsed by pos & neg,
winged souls that gave up radiance to taste what passes through,
as one bird keeps challenging the mirror
the moon wont come when we rhyme,
my unknown twin seeing what I cant, walking like a wind spider
on the one percent of air that's solid. I'd rather have hands than wings,
I'd rather tack on gravitys suctions, where 1 minus 1 gives 3
we come with light, we go when the rain needs changing, when a panel of sky
surrenders to its hoarded corrosion, singing all 4 parts like giant helicopters
approaching a county of golden wheat much taller than expected, sneaky & magnetic,
pilot sees giant pats of butter melting into a pond we cant not jump into,
making the road more like bread each time we roll across it,
more tiny mouths and other openings:
whats not better with butter,
trading a hand for a bakery, trapping the steam from the rivers bathhouse
to thicken and slice, to patch the wind and tax it, those who have nothing to hide
never go anywhere, always wait for the caller's message
with my back against the window, distressing its resistance,
head wont lead, head with mattress corners taped around it, wires around the mattress bits,
cooling tubes, copper dyed my hair raining pennies bathed in mirror filament syrup oil
consensus is squirming on a hard surface unsure what trees could grow inside me
what carbon retention in my conscience looking out the door of my speeding v7—
not a missing cylinder but other priorities, a cylinder with no initiative, with two left arms,
I keep taking the ring off my neck but it keeps reappearing, a little smaller each time,
more bristled, smelling like its about to come alive and hungry
when the duck hit my windshield I noticed it had no wings:
this better be a meat storm, we're so hungry we have trident -topped umbrellas,
a pork shoulder stuck on the basketball rim, maybe we can fill the abandoned wading pool
with the trees our crowded houses have killed and roast the days meatfall
since we come from everywhere someones always eating, someone needs to sleep
while others wail at 70 words per minute flowing too diffuse a syntax of sudden now,
sodden and sifting, lanky muscular quick,
when I bring my fists together like hammers from different centuries,
where the wires lead, where the satellite pours in espresso frequencies biting their own fumes
a third arm please, a light from incandescent ribs, when cotton was more like cowhide.
when only adults were strong enough to wear leather.
i am a drop inside the stomach of a flea on a hair dancing with hallucinations,
coz we go there again and again, ; its as if we live there, as though they pay us to hang around,
putting on clothes and giving them back, knowing whose eyes are loaded,
whose expanding black shoe might think I'm an airstrip
if i dont stand up i'll never fall, when hunger is the sky food is someone elses planet.
I could step across the river, through the searing radiation.
filling a thousand pages with the tiniest possible, every last ounce of detail
from books I think I read, saw on a shelf, listed as a soup ingredient
I know by the smell ive never been here,
rain building against the wall of the sky, a door in the floor,
nano-salmon migrating through the shower head,
through my multi-punctured eardrums, a sky too tight to turn away from
when im finally trusting in the walls they change channel, sprouting in one corner,
raising tiny arteries: an eye that's forgotten to sleep,
we have nothing to boil for coffee but orange juice,
we have nothing to drink from but hands and shoes
dan raphael's known throughout the Northwest for his energetic, vocabulary-expanding performances, occasionally with jazz musicians. His most recent books are The State I'm In and Impulse & Warp: The Selected 20th Century Poems. Current poems appear in Big Bridge, Otoliths, Snow Monkey, Tip of the Knife and Caliban.
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