The hallucinogens
were an appendix
of boycotted anecdotes

Soma to Psyche :
a Roma serpent
hijinks
mescaline
unspent

We were smithereens
paroxysms
curated
into a lamellar

I wanted to drown you
heart,
drop   your small slogan
off the canyon’s bay window

I wanted your head       to hold
under the water’s knocking cold

I wanted you cast away, this
sharp voodoo flicked over a fool’s gold

I wanted you
to stray
a nickel tossed
into a flooded root cellar

When the sun turned into a swatch of organza
When the words were rented canoes
When the land starved its taboos
across a crucified axis
When the sea brimmed its blood
in a sharp hemorrhage

& daylight drifted through its own carnage
sleep sought the ligature of morphine
licked into Orpheus’ postcards
pocketed with untidy hindsight

The turnstiles in your thumbs
were indrawn through calloused
knuckles of afghan rug-sellers

Demi-monde, I say this
god through music guides
Shostakovich was as angelic
as landslides

Breathing is always in plural
The mirrored contagions
of a small bird caught in
a slowly revving propeller

How death can be a frozen note
a fading serenade
balanced on the savage glade
I too am ephemera
thankful for something less
than forever
something more than
yesterday