ooh. irresistable. nice arrow kissable. shocked and submissible. blown apart at the arms and legs. my friends. my eggs. stolen, spent and spilled out. filled up with and pulled apart by doubt. my mucous membranes. my stolen fast lanes. miles upon miles of grossly overgrown and inflamed. it’s time to believe. in cupidity. in avarice. i am a walrus. bloated and beached. on a tiny dessert island. whirling in smilepools. dripping with iodine and ecstasy. filled up with cocoa beans. we could be asleep right now. like lobsters in caught traps. blocked apart into pieces. like coal. like warning bells. like the way the sea smells. my wallet is stuffed with sea shells. my arms are engraved by snowflakes. it’s taken me a while to get back here. could we fold up and then freeze out. caught with all of our dreams out. i am an astronaut. and you are the sky. if i could get over you, i’d just be all right. i once held a hand. wasn’t my own. i once took a life. i climbed up. i spit out. i shot off. i robbed you. then bought off. a jury. of armchair convictors. with justice. with prudence. i wasn’t allowed in. with liquor on my breath. with my hands and feet shaped like warm watery death. i came in on crutches. i went out on a bus. bound for bethlehem. where my savior lay. smelling of sweetness and lotus. he was the cutest baby born today. to a mother in snowshoes. to a dream kept alive long past waking. it’s the same in the sunshine. it’s the footfalls of a doe through the forest. the long line of penguins as they jump into the cold depths. their hidden down. their secret feathers. protecting them like us. if only we locked hands. if only we had been tied at the waist. i wouldn’t be a figment of my own imagination. a locked away object of your only desiring. i’m an incline. i’m rolling upwards back to you. i carried a cardboard two-by-four. i came down and hit you with it. and then built a house. a cross. an elegantly embossed tomb. remnants and legacy of destruction. it could be the queen’s head on that pole. it could be a small rodent who survives us as a race. i once heard a name. blocked off and locked off. i’m a four foot tall alarmist. i’m clamoring around in my pajamas. i’m a waste-water treatment facility. i have shiny gold ball-arms. i convert your poop into drinking water. and murder your parents. in a lebanese cafe. in a cage of my own making. i’m a sunscope. designed to deliver us past this sphere. i penetrate the blood-black depths of atlantis. i’m an embalming ocean of fast love and slow lies. hello. hello to the heavens. i wish i was your lover. some kind of phallus tower on the hilltops of southern england. a cataclysm of long-forgotten and now largely misunderstood wisdom. you broke open the world for me. in a moment of magic. and ever since, i’ve been trying to put it back together.

i’m not mystery. believe me. i’m a real flesh-and-bones elephant. a tidal wave of unfrozen mammoth hair. a locker full of naked pictures of the virgin mary. taking it up the ass and various places. by a whole football team full of helmets. and velvet sands draw us slowly inward. into our eventual becoming. i’m a whip cracking in the background. bent flower stems. the resultant stampede. of a herd of half-bred rat-locusts. i’m an underground assault machine. i’m defending my space. you’re a will-o-the-wisp. you’re a logical ending to an otherwise confusing story. i could have bleached my teeth in your shoeshine. you stood stellar before dying. i’m a whiskered feline padding through your cemetery. your burial plot. the pageant of poetry. the plots which conspired against us. but really worked for us. i’m a marble hysteria. an unmovable torch boiling against the darkness. the crane hands. the cooked and delicious humility. of wood-elves. and miniature motorbikes. all signals bent and rounded off to zero. even though there’s something there. i vouch for you. i give you my word. my long lists of vaccuums and onionographs. all the patents i’ve ever created. just wallow with me here in this mud. i’m a hatter. i could make you a way. to feed horses. to fish with dough bits. to sing songs like sea chanties. to mask the will of the majority. i’m a flesh burn. a flash bulb. a grave robber named lucas. who all he ever wanted was a little piece of your skin. just to know you. to sort and unfold. i have a hunch about this one. she’s going to go all the way. back up to rosary beads. back down to human american intuition. old-fashioned. explicit. exploding. walk-in closets. walk out again in another world. named narnia. hello mr. tumnus. care to come and walk among us? are your legs too furry? to full of fury? and your goat butt. your rancid little shoes of too-much-oiled leather. white queen. pillow stones. broken and atrophied westerners. all weak from the touch. of dolorous moonbeams. delt out like a sword stroke. a quiver full of alibis. i’m watching you. i’m going to lay siege to your castle. with a hundred thousand snakes. sent in to disown you. my, my how you’ve grown. you’ve got skin-colored hair. coming down in waves across your shoulders and face. i’m only belligerent when i’m dancing. i’m only in love with you when i’m totally drunk. and unhinged. i’m a cracker cookie crumbled. with testimonies and other words mumbled. at two a.m. at last call by the payphone. i don’t want to see you go home. starved and alone and embarrassed. ugly and used up. yellow breasts scraped off. you’re all chrome underneath. a robot sent from the computer-future. sent to fuck and destroy me. well, let’s go. we better get started. we’ve only got a few hours before we become sunlight.

PS. i spent a long time thinking about this last chapter. a coda of comeliness. of communists. i went out & came back. designed and re-designed my ambitions to suit you. i hope it worked.