Animal Dreams

I refuse to put my affairs in order

because I haven’t lived yet.

Two years ago I rode a bus through a strange neighborhood.

I opened a window.

There were flowers blooming everywhere.

I was a certain kind of animal; a human being.

I wanted to eat the world,

to know every solid thing 

with my tongue,

but I was late for work.

I got off at my stop and walked

the same eight blocks 

past the same stores and parking lots.

While I walked I lived a thousand years 

and met no one.

I dreamed a big dream while I walked

thinking about sailors living in a whale’s belly,

hammocks swinging from rib roof beams, 

lit by whale oil lamps.

I saw a painting of it once in a book

and never forgot it.

I suggest you use my bones for picture frames

and remember the blood that was in me

and how I had hands and fingers

and I was small and then I was big

and I had brown hair and I scratched my elbow

and I fell down and cried

and I was made of a seed.

I never ate enough for how hungry I was.

My desire was for the river

of a dark city whose lights

shine on water, whose buildings hold a thousand

bodies with voices and movements and dishes and thoughts,

who dance alone to the radio

in the same way that a bird looks

with a short red beak and a crest and soft feathers

at a girl walking to school,

who stretch their legs out and point their toes

for the messes they’ll leave

when time slides shut.

I am a certain kind of animal.

My obligation is to breathe.

I had a revelation.

I had it a thousand times.

I wandered the desert sucking on a stone.

Finally I came to a tire dealership

with a boy’s head mounted on top

whose mechanical eyes moved from side to side.

I marveled at the mind that conceived it.

At a market I bought a bunch of bananas and a quart of beer

and goggled at the men, women, and children

in the aisles and check out lanes

who had clothes and hair and eyes 

and beating hearts —

same species.

If a wolf looks at a wolf

or sun hits a leaf

is it the same as chopping tomatoes

in the back room of a restaurant?

Put your finger through this hole —

what do you feel?

I commune with the dead at the public library

anxious to ask Graves a question

or dance with Collette.

On the other side of the world

I’m sewing a coat for my baby.

I’m an old man pointing a brush with my tongue.

I’ve devised a way of painting

the court doesn’t recognize,

but the peasants

prefer my flowers and bees 

for their gates.

I die a guilty prisoner, shivering

teeth clenched on the dream I never tasted.

My mouth and flesh have a taste for this and

everything else.

I run between houses and over fences

until I’m sure there’s no longer

anyone behind me

and then I catch my breath in some bushes,

look at the scratches on my arms and legs.

I fall asleep. When I wake up it’s dark,

the grass is wet and stars are out.

I walk home with the night animals

staring from shadow lairs

and sleep on the porch with the dog.

The walking dead, who don’t get burned by fire,

whose houses burst into flame over and over again,

rescue their notebooks and tape recorders,

teach the willing how to make heat,

are offered treasures they don’t accept

and leave before the feast begins.

There are twelve lessons.

There are five things.

I met a very old man.

I hid in an old woman’s garden.