The Evolution Jamboree

O Grace, my show-biz villain days are over!
This poem is brought to you from a pulpit
With the office skills of a cloud. A spectre

Has haunted itself after curfew along
An ash road. Even if I saunter the ice
Barge disguised as a puppet, I'm caught with my

Arms around a cow. If the rain has stopped, are
We fighting? The circus tent had sand in its
Eyes, but the sparkling fox washes its own eyes

Out with its tongue. An eclipse leaked all over
The salon. Love to Grandma and the Senate.
It's an upside down police tactic this bird

Gets around. Take a swig of yarn and call me
If a bug should punch its way through a broken child.
It's not the scariest thing I can think of.

Like a bingo error, I must whisper while
I dry and hum. The careful sled, the stomach
Bugle. The clay boys sang invisible air.

Tangled old boats sent letters to the sick, and
Spent farmers pulled each other from the Middle
Ages. Bethlehem. Prehistory. And food.

Independence Day

The extra sailor binds my hands with a swan,
And tells me several stories in an uncommitted tongue.

His mates ignore the island. They load their frightened
Horses onto boats. I watch them row casually toward

Their new wives, their patient birds, their elaborate children,
While the extra sailor places boxes of granite on

Each of my legs. I weigh myself on a scale of snowflake
To elbow room. The night undertakes

Its filthy blessings. As he bleeds into the horizon,
The extra sailor calls out: "Ladies and gentlemen,

Please rise for our national anthem!" The granite sings
The fireworks to me. The swan makes a church of my fingers.