preoccupied by this bird
knocking on my occipital
  I lie
about the man
squatting on the windowsill
  hammerhead gargoyle
his cranial cavity is a chasm
not a canyon
  a silkworm tunneled therein
the man arrived
on a saucer
not in the Ming vase
  delft might have inked him
this is not an exercise
in retroflexion
  I am not inverted

There is too much truth-
telling
  I lie
about rococo and the ceiling
of the Bavarian castle
  Bardolino confessional & a priest
  named Theo
the flaking wall of the cellar
and my grandfather
and his minions
  a chop shop a hog Harley and Chapstick
about mixing turmeric
and turpentine for
that savory stew
I fed you
  saliva and phlegm-gobs, as it happens

This bird is an augur
presaging a Jungian carnival
bowling pins gyre
horses say Mother
a dog laps
another dog
round a NASCAR track
a rolled up tongue
a home-rolled cigarette
Are you on board
  clipped in
  pinned to styrofoam?
Did you build the pop can pyramid
on the floor of the Pacific?
  If you
  ask me
  I will lie

There's no two ways
about it
I hang spiraling
like a mobile
   driftwood fossil foil
   aluminum rabbit ear antennae
   a ribcage in a glass case
a cake box
without a cake
   now you see
Do you believe?

Airfoil

Come along little one it won't be long
the blue heron walks and walks hands
behind her back we keep our distance
solitary beings
being solitary
I wanted to be a lappet-faced vulture
toe-sprawled on tiptoe
wings heavier-than-the-heaviness-of-all
glossy and black, weightier than an Oxford
Encyclopedia the one with the drawer
with a magnifying glass
I would be hideous ghoulish beautifully deformed
Gothic-hero-ugly the gaping yawn
of a cathedral

One day little one we will stand together
you have hovered too long
we will rise up and slam the air down
with monstrous wings
beat at the emptiness
stroke every soul we lost
all of the dust of
all of us
will be flour from the fists
of our Mother
we will be salt from a shaker
we will steal back the breath the angels stole
we will transgress: Celestial theft
Come along little one
it won't be long