And since I do absolutely nothing (my pride, like my fur,

all gone) nothing happens to me. And if a whole lot

of nothing happens to you, Maxes, that’s peace.

Which is what we want. Trust me.

Dawn of Man

DAWN OF MAN

After the cocoon I was in a human body

instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back

there was great pain—I groped to my feet

where I felt wings behind me, trying

to tilt me back. They succeeded in doing so

after a day of exertion. I called that time,

overwhelmed with the ghosts of my wings, sleep.

My thoughts remained those of a caterpillar—

I took pleasure in climbing trees. I snuck food

into all my pains. My mouth produced language

which I attempted to spin over myself

and rip through happier and healthier.

I’d do this every few minutes. I’d think to myself

What made me such a failure?

It’s all a little touchingly pathetic. To live like this,

a grown creature telling ghost stories,

staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.

And even over dinner or in bed—

still hearing the stories, seeing the pictures—

an undertow sucking me back into myself.

I’m told to set myself goals. But my mind

doesn’t work that way. I, instead, have wishes

for myself. Wishes aren’t afraid

to take on their own color and life—

like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet,

puffs out his cheeks, and strips them bloody.

Black Bulls

BLACK BULLS

My mind is

three black bulls on

three hills of sand, far apart.

My loved ones

sleep in clay hollows.

If I turn from you, you will go back

to your clay hollow.

The aqueducts of the city of my language

clot with lather.

The world is bad

and I am bad.

Three black bulls on three hills

of sand are stretching apart

the sheet of my language, crawling with ants.

This is the basis

upon which we seek company:

I am bad,

the world is bad.

Three black bulls stomp the hills of sand

into blistered glass.

Their hooves swelter against these

wrong bells.

I am so sorry that you have come to this mind of mine.

Part 2

2

For Crow

FOR CROW

We tended to a crow,

and now it’s fine.

It shakes its head, and eats crickets,

forgetful bird

that you put in a pouch to make sleep.

They said his eyes were blue because he was young.

Black blurs the eyes of crows as they grow old—

all motion

disruption in a lake of light.

I am a crow, and

I think you are mostly a pattern of motion

and I am a leaf—and your hands fan under

and over me, and create a little space

in which the thing in my life that adds up

is my motion.

I think you can be traced

most easily by the echoes of your kinetics, my love.