Your lips, neck, arms,

these are not a harbor;

the you-around-you is the harbor.

In our bed, in the dark,

it is not sound, not outline,

but the motion of you

that brings to the surface of my body

all of the apparentness

of a settling glass of muddy water.

How I feel is then forgotten,

and instead I find myself

moving, joy, moving!

To Randal, Crow-Stealer, Lord of the Greenhouse

TO RANDAL, CROW-STEALER, LORD OF THE GREENHOUSE

I master the technology to make bricks.

I build altars clumped with fire.

I am not afraid to light

a flower and destroy her beauty;

the crispy flower has been taken to a godly feast.

Do you pity my imagination? It will kill you.

My mother will kill you.

She is my imagination.

I am a leather horse, and my mother is riding me.

You are a man: alert, passionate.

You sit in an almond of glossy hair.

You are capable of being persuaded by fine argument.

You even smile eagerly when convinced.

Remember what a great time we had in the first stanza?

And now this: me blubbering to mommy

over your brilliance.

Tell me what it’s like to be you. Well Max,

imagine if you stayed

by your bricks after your sacrifice

until your body warmed them.

It’s called being indoors, and it’s a good first step.

I’d die of thirst!

Imagine prying fingers through the bricks,

making tunnels your mind first saw as ghosts.

Imagine pressing your lips to the pipes

and sipping dew from the outside.

You are exquisitely sensitive.

I imagine defecating over your eyebrows: a unibrow.

And what about my godly flower? You still haven’t accounted for that!

I inhale the flower’s smoke, and it allows me to control every inch of

my body,

and a little man emerges: this is called being possessed.

I dance out here, trouserless on the salt flat, dazzled by hail,

because every gesture perfects my body

into the little man’s happy home.

You have no flowers in your indoor dark, fireless Randal!

Max, I have invented glass, through which the sun may light my flowers.

One of these days you’ll be stable enough to make a woman happy,

and that will go a long way.

*

The secret to making people happy, Randal,

I call at your departing, shiny suit,

is that I am the people!

Sky-Sex Dreams of Randal

SKY-SEX DREAMS OF RANDAL

I am raving at you

with extremely good eye contact.

I fancy, lovely, that there are many drains

to circle.

Look at me and bore me,

bore me good and flaccid.

That’s right, now I’m in a getup,

dressed like a palm-tree lady—hula skirt, the whole shebang.

I have reached the end of suffering

and sat on the dark porch:

On the white ledge, a spider throws up the fat

of a bee.

Three white wood chairs in the mud,

a glass-topped table sealed into