Y

1

What might have sounded
Like a fair-ground frog
As it flailed (ribbit after ribbit)
To top out Eric Houdini’s

10-gallon hat was in fact
The mind clearing
A leopard-slug
From its throat

As memory bowled
Down a waxed passage
Of cherry-stained oak,

Aiming for the spare pin
Standing in
As exclamation mark.

Yeah. For the night
I couched
Beneath an elm

In the rambles of Central Park–

That while recounting my own soap opera
Of caws and croaks, after failing to veer.
To veer from what now plays for a Rick

& Morty episode.

2

It was the 1 Train’s ingress
I took for Super Mario’s
Green drainpipe
Of first awe then plain warp

After piping down a green wad
Of pineapple express spiked
With the thorns of (yeah)

Some angel dust.

3

And so like Dante without guidebook
I entered Hell’s bowels; it’s only in hind-
sight, after you’ve tipped over one too

Many cows, and having stirred with your wits
Embracing the curb, that the lightbulb dawns
For eureka!–i.e., the idea that you should’ve
Tossed in the towel years ago. (Yeah right.)

That instead of cranking
Your mind like an oven
Baked too high, an attempt
To tweeze out the Morse code

For that crow playing taps
Atop a mountain
Of cans and worms—

Where you find yourself
Something like the eel,
Almost flailing to squirm out
From what reeks

For your world’s compost pile.

4

That life opens as readily
As it might fold–
That or flood for a sodden Fed-
Ex box of burnt-

Out bulbs
And (yeah)
Light sockets
As the ward

Turns out your pockets
And (surprise,
Surprise)

Let’s you keep the dandruff.

5

Meanwhile, four years gone. The world could care less
For any post of panic or quip of alarm, calling to mind
How your brain was (once-upon-a-time) minted and, so

at one point, meant to be coined to the rhyme
Of The Ancient Mariner.
Yeah. To be booked Life,
Laboring as analog for that tag
(title) of your first book. Valley of Empty Pockets.