the elephants trample a little one
the little one’s tongue sticks out,
his mangled body hugs the ground
and his bugged-out eyes tell a story
no one wants to know.

a clever one proposes we tame them
we can ride them to work, to church,
to coffee shops, ice cream parlors,
sweatshops, and red-light districts.
the town nods in agreement.

the town captures a baby one,
its skin does not feel like wire brush
and its tusks are still endearing
the clever one talks softly to the baby
and places some peanuts on the ground.

the baby one inspects the peanuts
and finding them favorable,
eats them noiselessly.  the town
cheers in delight as the baby one
nimbly fingers each one before eating.

yet, the baby one keeps marching.
the legs persist in making that motion,
while sleeping, while shitting, while sexing,
the elephants are always marching.
peanuts only stop them momentarily.

the town orders air strikes,
a sunny forecast with a heavy shower
of peanuts, the town is to prepare
accordingly for this weather—
preferably by staying indoors.

and we will splice the peanuts
with a benzodiazepine,
and then we can control their
movements, and the town
will then be saved.

the elephants do stop and eat them
but their legs start moving in reverse,
all across town, in straight lines
through alleyways and street corners
and they march backwards.

the elephants are marching again,
the town runs out of peanuts,
the clever one runs out of ideas,
the baby one runs out of town
and they keep marching.

While grain stalks sway and weave
by invisible song the wind plays
While the trees blossom against a painted sky
pollen inciting laughter rather than sneeze
While rabbits run away together to a burrow
and deer steal a glance before disappearing
While the snake is eaten by ants
and the ants eaten by other ants
and the other ants eaten by human feet.
While I piss in the shelter of a tall pine,
and the trees, smiling furtively,
whisper amongst each other.
While the sun sets and darkness settles
grass I cannot see still nestling between my toes
While I run at the International Horse Park,
I think of you.

Mason waits outside. The building is cold, but the warmth of the summer evening cools his nerves. He grabs the front of his shirt.

Push, pull. Push, pull.

He does this as rapidly as possible to keep the sweating down to a minimum. He won’t go inside. Not yet. It is only a little sweat, not enough to make him stink. Not even enough to show through his shirt.

The shape of the smell of my mother.
The taste of the words of my brother.
My father smiling again.
Impossibilities haunt my dreams.

The professor has given up, my own attention
a current redirecting to the moss-covered forest–
the Cape of Good Hope lonely without my company,
Africa is an actual place
there is no mystery,
the etchings of existence on those trees
scratched by animals conceived by other animals.
these are real things we are talking about.

A car crashes.
I am happy.
It blows up.
I was happy.
We don’t escape unharmed.
Am I happy?
I climb out the window.
I am happy again.
I rub my bruises off.
I am happy.
I cry to remind myself I’m alive.
I am remotely happy.
And also because I can’t fuck you anymore.
I am happy in a troubled kind of way.

A bike flips.
I am happy.
It flipped too much.
I am happy.
My arm is bent in a sick way.
I am trying hard to be happy.
I crawl with my knees to the driveway.
I am kind of happy.
I call for my mom.
I am happy.
She doesn’t come.
I am half happy.
I remember she is dead.
I will always be half happy.

My wheelchair sits alone.
I am happy.
I am laying in bed watching tv.
I am happy but bored.
There are tubes inside me.
I am happy but bored.
And no one comes to visit.
I am happy but bored.
I forget what I wait for, but I wait anyways.
I am happy and impatient.
But waiting is living.
And I realize I really am happy.
And if I wait long enough.
I will always be happy.

The blurs of motion,
of steps treading so quickly,
pretty faces ugly ones too,
all blur together
and cascade into a mural
on the shop window.

The mural changes constantly.
I see curiosity bud
with the dews of a thousand glances.
An arm indifferent
to winter’s one hundred caresses.
A sneeze with ten droplets of the clearest snot,
emanating from a Helen of Troy.

And one me,
sipping coffee I can’t taste,
sitting in a creaking chair,
hands cold not from winter
but from lack of warmth.

And I am the mural.
But I am also painting the mural.
But I am also watching the mural.
But I am never in the mural.

To have someone else paint with me,
watch with me,
be the mural with me.
This will not even help me, for I am never in the mural to begin with.
So I get up and walk out the door, and I stand outside the shop window briefly.

I am still not in the mural.

“Jamison, I want it fixed!”

There’s no answer from the den where a TV as big as Benjamin’s bed is mounted to the wall.

“Jamison!”

“Papa can talk with his eyes,” says Benjamin to his friends, “but Mama never listens.”

of earthquakes and hurricanes,
not by those torrents

which relay screams of the above
to the quiet earth below.

but in breezes, a symphony played
only by the shuffling of leaves.

and in passing unexpected whispers,
unsure of what has transpired.

like how stillborn clarity can
remarkably smile for the first and last time.

stories which end as soon as they begin,
stuck in the gate leading to significance.

there I have found you,
but you are already gone.

i t

-      s o o o ounds

-som        ething

-                        l   ike

thissss

but then saxophone and keyboard
somehow sit harmony down,
calmly reassuring her to
give dissonance a chance, and that
drums wasn’t really that bad of a
conversationalist, and somehow
they can work things out.

harmony makes an obscene gesture
and meekly realizes she is out of character,
she blushes and realizes dissonance
might have taught her a little too well.
she sits down and maintains character,

and the music sucks ass.