REBORN

I’m reborn daily by
The Thought Machine.

My mother’s tubes
slowly untie themselves.

POEM

Living like the weatherman,
hooked to the wand of my mucosa.
The streetlights illuminating
what they don’t want to:

shadows teeter at the outside light-spray—
what is an anomaly’s animosity
but black icicles, bluffing
in bass-smog—no, I mean:

let all passwords die.
Let taboos remain empty.
I mean, caresses of silk that ache
for their own touch.

The daffodils backfire.
The looking-glass becomes
a shame-maker, misnamed.
This ruinous work of nostalgia

toys with me, leaving me
like a cowardly lion in a vast solitude,
left standing like a grim reaper
in a windless wildfire, mute-slowed,

funny faces stalemated, but I can still
make the jukebox react without
coinage, like the bellhop making
the deaf react, like an earthquake

penetrating pressure-points,
making the graveyard bones
clatter together—fingertips through
a wounded punchbowl.