Don’t call it that

It’s just the tiger devouring
oranges outside the medical center

Sometimes when I read your letters
I imagine you’ve turned and whispered it all to me

in the car and
juice runs down my chin

The first innovation being love

God opens the air vent
Ancient dust stuck to the lip

His hands with their little
distractions of blood and ink

The only thing to find its way
faster than light
is water

Drip drip

Then you become a stone

Get me started

Smoked a bong in Heaven
Sipped some controversial liquid, too

Oh, my music surged!

The owls were way too much
Way too in the sky for me

I threw up my blue glass—the one
I’d thought was gone for good—

A lost souvenir from the cloud forest

Paris

Saw a little scottie dog

embroidered on the derrière
of a denim skirt

Almost immediately
I returned across the water

Salt lapping at my rapture

Here is a photograph of us
at a tower of death

Somewhere amidst the screams
I bought you a sword

Miniature and lethal

I would run my fingers along the center
to bring out its glow

It still lives inside the velvet box
I never gave to you

(Much later I discovered
it could cut through time)