Stood Up
On finding I was lost I pulled away, lurched upright,
Leaving two x’s and a nose looking up from the floor.
I whipped off my glasses, and a caricature rolls down, better not look.
face after face flashed past
In a blink, in a flick of a wrist, crack of a cap gun.
Spilling down, smashing at my feet.
Shed at last, fresh chill in the breeze.
Stuck fast! How soon the paste had set.
“Let It Loose” I heard,
The world nudged past my ears.
Rustling fabric swinging in its own wind.
storefronts climb into drawings and fold themselves
A dust of glass remains, geology’s drool.
I kneel: Can I do lines with a shofar?
Spreading like a puddle beneath a thousand eyes.
The rustling vortexes itself, becomes my gyroscope.
Woven orbits, perfectly fast, perfectly, still
Hula hoops spin off the top, now one, eventually another.
Primary colors, R.G. Bargy, their Roy Gee Bivouac at my feet
And another, a discus, a handful of Cheerios an embroiderer’s hoop.
A belch of 45’s, wax birds, the 7-inch kind, tickle the air above
Three dancing legs forever tense holding perfection.
But they must swell, and spin, and shatter on the pavement.
Leering with paper tongues, shellac lips gleaming
In a friendless grimace of readiness.
Hairs stand on end, sentinels of my personal space
Crackling of paper, soft swish of drapes,
Brush my naked arm
Slick silk flows, Velcro tugs my skin, a firm caress,
Like the thunk of a door forever closed just for me
Dissolving, a wind springs up, my stomach lays down, dozing.
What are we now, and where and why do you keep looking like that?
A laser gaze, eyes crossing somewhere just past my head.
Rainbow lights clog my vision, rippling unpronounceable alphabet.
Crab hands contort, spasm each other for the strength to reach out
And part the curtain
I just knew that you’d be there, felt it anyway
I’d known the feeling at least,
Spackling my heart to hold it in place.