If a Lion Could Speak

The world churns this body,
has been my whitish ipecac,
like a big tongue in the gut,
has made me hurtle words.

I am a refinery, a plant that shits beauty.
I’m tired and frightened, that is depression,
I’ve said it before.  Nothing is everything is love,
and no great love for the man'inventing.

Touch me off, go back to the aether,
monkey fist, half-hitch, noose.
Love is a sandpaper, it smooths corners,
it bevels edges, it makes dust of us,

finally we go back to the wind.
Every ribcage is a ladder with rungs
of bone.  I’m glad I’m thin
so I can count how high I have to go.


                       *


On the hunt, the devil grass hurts
my eyes.  I’d rather sleep,
I’d rather yawn my children into petted being.

The thousand frights between
my lips have made such games
of ivory shaking in the voice of earth.

Down at the roots is the only
place to make sense of it all,
in the dark that has always been blind.

The light is confusing, exposing too much,
it hurts my slit slit eyes, I should keep this mouth shut,
I know better than to speak with sounded words.  

Children, as you test your voices bellow
to the sun but listen after,
living listen prior.

Every ladder is a ribcage with handles
that fit like weapons against your lungs and heart;
I amount body to the fall, to a fable named silence.


                        *            


Fallen into a cart of apples,
bright and delicious, my option

is to eat my passage out.  It’s lonely in the golden fruit.
I wish you were here to share my sickness and my empty hunger.

If a lion could speak,
you would not understand him.