Revised poems

Love You Kids

Copters clip to the clouds as their
lost luggage looks upward,
“I’m still here,” they cry, and down below
shooters of looters lay the law.

Pilots peer at the roof-stranded refugees
but they only see black mold
spreading across the shelter’s summit.


Fever Dream

At night I crawl into a castle,
pull its outer walls up to my chin
and lay my arms across the battlements.

Outside there’s the roar of an army
of mice and elephants
stampeding along the moat.
The orange, circular explosions created by their artillery
swell slowly and innumerably beneath my eyelids.

I look over the rampart’s edge,
peer down the curtain wall
and see my feet sticking out
at the bottom, toes wiggling,
twenty feet below.


Listening to Joanna Newsom

There is a sacred ribbon
with your voice on it,
and when I imagine
pulling this ribbon
back and forth
between my ears,
I am on the floor,
eyes rolled back,
my top teeth sticking out
for a grin.

You may make your ribbon
into a clothesline,
if you like,
and I will be your laundry
hung up by this ribbon
as a gentle breeze
blows me
in the direction
of a nearby cornfield.