Impenetrable Fog Bank

Clouds were good company

but forests

were her first love.

There was no

need to distinguish one

from the next.

She could bathe in them all.

The black had long

merged with

the rain while the hardwood

kept the suppleness

of twigs.

She wrapped herself in all

their limbs.

She never could tell

virgin from second growth.

They stopped

discriminating among

themselves after

learning they were several

species of grass

born coniferous from

a single

sprig of rosemary

or grown deciduous

and hungry from spring-fed

shoots of bamboo.

Rewind and Relax

They put a flower in each hand

and a worm in one ear.

Butterflies in

the rise and fall of your pelvis.

They do it in public.

By the glow of your mood ring.

And when you’re about to fall

they let you.

They say only fans are

media ready. They wrap you

in rootlets and by

the time the anesthetic wears

off your

highs and lows

are mixed with soundbites.

Your vital

signs sleep in the source code

of a Sudafed

–the sort of thing you

spend all

day dissolving and bleaching

in a lead-lined sink.

Twin Peak Topics of Boredom

And a dentist willing to pull all

their teeth while they were

still in their twenties so they

wouldn’t have another toothache

so he wouldn’t have to drill

and fill or yank them out one

by one like their kids’ dentist

would someday do and they

lay awake at night wrapped

in a hermit crab carapace their

kids never saw the point of

taking turns in a squeeze

machine their parents had no

knowledge of and wouldn’t

have the inclination to swallow.