Dear K.,

                                    for Franz Kafka

Some day I’ll explain. But now this far into the cavity,
I’m left chewing rocks in the broken bathtub
Some angel of death abandoned on the sidewalk.
Not for the last time is it growing (miraculous)
Out of hand–the mind spinning like a rehabbed top
Between the camel’s humps
While the giraffe runs over a stop sign. The luck
That I should be the only bystander spitting crow
At the scream of the crime
Sounds about right. Like a rabid punch.
In the meantime, I’m the hunched-over word
Inside the dictionary that no one will look up.
And then what precisely is it? To sit and write poetry
As the yard floats away in slurry fragments
Where you are left lugubrious, deflated, smoking
In the wrinkles of this shade. Whatever else
Is happening somewhere off, galloping along
On a pink Triceratops isn’t likely but quite possible.
That’s the delicate spark. Meet the Flintstones.