took my arm and said something about MRSA
climbed into a sitting position
took on his own half-assed-half-lotus
“I had an axe and a wife.
That’s all I remember.
I had a rabid left hand,
stimulating my neck by free-association.”
pupils the size of dodge-balls
have you ever heard the word ‘mamihlapinatapai?’
isn’t that Yaghan?
it has the suction of a small vessel
the business with the teeth
the flash of a conceptual tongue
the last linguistic lights flashing
reaching into remote third worlds
to explain the kind of social ephemera
you’d face on Bulvonn Drive

even though he was upright
he was still supine in the mind

“I’ll warn you of everything.”
He said ‘ponce’ through his nasal cavity.
He still has my portfolio table.
wrapped his arm around her silk-shirted waist
the stars wrapped in efflorescing halos
“The Personal Assistant to the Third Hand.”
“I know about you from walking slowly,
from counting the furniture on my own half of the Earth.”
“Look at those tiny churches, reading old books.”
“I thought you told him in a voice
that you had some personal responsibility for the day.”

don’t think that I don’t have a gamut
of branches, optical nerves, eyes