Animalia - The Pandas, The Toucan, Vitiligo (The Butterfly), The Lioness

*Important Note: these poems are diverse entities and should not be read as a coherent aggregate, unless you decide that the animalia theme merits an interpretation based upon a sexual maturation process simulated by the chronological progression of the poems. This note is bullshit*

The Pandas

Curled in blue pandas and bottomless beds,
glow-in-the-dark stars overhead;
there is no crib and no baby blue
worn carpet with a prune perfume.
Slim silent trophies gesturing, moving
closer, their shaken shadows looming
larger and larger on the moonlit walls,
the anorexically thin acoustic stalls
that assist the singers who steal my sleep
in discordant duets between wolf and sheep.
Howling in communion, my voice
is unheard beneath my timid toys,
so I hold blue pandas close to my chest,
with glow-in-the-dark stars overhead.


The Toucan

I broke the beak off the balsawood toucan
that talked to me incessantly from her perch
on my bedside shelf; I took that green bitch
and I snapped her pouting pursed mouth
off like the stem from a banana.

I was content for a week before I glued her
back together; after that she always talked
with a lisp.


Vitiligo (The Butterfly)

She was on top,
undulating like an inchworm on a leaf,
trying to metamorphose.
I held her nascent wings tentatively,
disinterested until
I spotted a pale membrane rotating
on her left ribcage,
and for the first time, I entertained her
fantasy.

She asked – I said,
you have a birthmark; she rolled
away in silence.
Perhaps she thought it could pull
her butterflight down,
but she was already grounded, and I
can no longer picture
her face, but I see the smudge on her side
perfectly.


The Lioness

When you nuzzle,
when you knead,
when you splash your scent
into my mangled mane,
when you play your tail
and raise your haunches,
remember:
I have a barbed penis.


-02/03/09