Stop Motion Cyclops

  Angel and demon glow in your head, stillborn undertow fermenting your bed Jagged tempo cut by fuzzy knife, scalpel to radio to afterlife  We’re absolutely free, Sardine Public Library Peel back the tin, feel yourself twin, Repression cemetery  Your visions a marquee, Public Sardine Library  Rotary phones eat up the bones, make yourself a sardine tree Poets don’t sink they flutter to the floor, spit out your drink and slide right through the door  Tabling content meant for the ghost, honor the advent of the almost  Smile like a mustache glued to your lip, sing like a car crash championship  Back in the itchy pocket of your mind, there is a fish who sets your watch unwind Salute the mystery, Sardine Public Library  Peel back the tin, feel yourself twin, transcendent tributary  Your visions a marquee, Public Sardine Library  Rotary phones eat up the bones, you’ll be a sardine tree

  Permafrost a silver Pentecost, chromatic daydream lost, the neighborhood embossed  Day for night the evenings acolyte, the afterthought of light, stars turn away in spite  I feel my age, sheets pulled away, clouds glower down their necks, it’s a quote unquote day  Permafrost, broadcasting blood exhaust, bouquet frozen mid toss, memories made moss Under bed, follow the fraying thread, echoing tangled head, synonym for misread  Prayer lowered head, scared pill bug spine, gravity, bourbon and scotch pine I hold my breath, trees do the same, trapped in a purgatory we’re ashamed to name  I’ve finished counting, I’m done with words My rib cage flutters, a home for hummingbirds  The permafrost covers my skin, it fills my grin

  Peel the stickers, put them back exactly, keep the cadence, mark it in your pulse  One set of footprints, never deviating, the same map leads to the same results  Raise a glass better than your children, make a plan and stick yourself inside  Portioned out, the calendars are locked in, found a favorite flavor in to hide  Every track soothing and familiar, every breath follows the same path Every sandwich fixing predetermined, every note the same place on the staff Swallowed curtains, snapped puppet strings, visible cough on phonograph  I see the dismantled table of contents, I hear the punctuation laugh Taste the feelings hid in the basement, wash them down with spilt surprise  We say our prayers by spinning and spinning, all fall down with mismatched eyes  Scramble up the vanishing mountain, disregard the lightning’s power  Change the music to flutes and feathers, resurrected as a sunflower 

  I sat there gulping sentences like giant sips of beer It’s like my head was second guessing thoughts as they appeared  The sun embarrassed hid behind the shadowy horizon  Swallowed up my shoulders in parenthesis disguise  Took the words right out, I forgot about it  Licking up the kitchen tiles to clean my footprint secrets  Fritter up the chimney to escape the sweet repeat what I don’t need the lovey happy huggy compliments to puddle me My vampire brain retreats at sunny adjectives befuddle uddle uddle me

  There’s something in the sky that whispers to you  It’s ringing like a phone inside your green head  You feel it like the tide, a sense of longing  By rocket Icarus your way to the moon  I saw the maker’s hand appear to help you  Lift you up and get you on your way  I mean, I’m not, it’s fine, it gives me some pleasure  We all need some help taking that first step  The moon’s made of the same substance that you are  A comforting sense of familiarity  The atmosphere’s full of a sense of foreboding  The landscape breathes the same air that you do The moon, the moon, the moon does not want you  The moon, the moon, the moon is not safe  The moon, the moon, the moon will just trap you  And freeze your little body of clay  There’s something in your heart that’s calling to you  He’s not light years but only a ladder away  The moon puts up her fists but you will not be deterred  You take him back to...

  O say can you see the setting sun sink in the sea  This chemical puddle’s a Rorschach test for your memory  Surrounded by conifer frowns stretched beneath tombstone eyes Unfurl the umbrella of cerebellum and begin to rise Gliding and hiding up behind my thought balloon  Swimming and brimming with lies in my thought balloon  This Monday of miscreant carbon dioxide preaches profound  And doorbells of dead history earthquake melodically from underground  Breathe particles of misted memory exhale them into your lap Pull yourself up on a sunbeam your toes lift above your bootstrap  Floating and clearing my throat in my thought balloon  Drifting and sifting myself in my thought balloon  Suffocate Never Meditate 

  You were named in the raindrops, your bloodstream constellated. Waltz of bone and echoes where once we precipitated  The flooding of the rivers, the puddling of the pavement  We scorn the nimbus and ignite in our amazement  We’ll replace all that evaporates, we’ll dream it all In crayon  Let the name melt on our tongues spun out in infinite wingspan In the pond near the bison we watched the turtle swim In tangled tines of branch and brine we lost sight of him  The density of breathing in the humid summer air Our faces blur, repeating the turtle’s sudden snare We’ll rebuild all that is erased, we’ll dream it all in crayon Let ourselves fade into focus, spun out in infinite wingspan Dread is a compass, it points you away  Death is a compost of bygone delay  Suck in your teeth in a loop of decay Begin all over, disrobe disarray  Inhaling all your hopes, exhaling all gravity  Filling your pockets with stars from tops of trees