Pol Pot

Piece by piece clothes fell skin peeled and flesh ran in lumps and gravy

 

Her sidelong glance still tosses lazily on your hammock smile

Icecube swirling provocation in your glass

 

The bones are good to drum with

Tusk plucked and thrown like a gauntlet

Row of ivory pawns

Pillars in war of no ceiling

 

 

You relieve the palms of superfluous arms and use their sawtooth blades

to slice our necks

 

Shells of infant heads you smash on trees

Oil stains trunks as tears of elephants

 

We play calm host to your furrowing worms

Rats tentative in our gullies

Radio flies

 

When you tap for one last formal dance we show up in crossbone bowties

Jiggling our hips we make the ratatat.tat of castanets

 

Your raised leg swings the ball of your foot bounces tilting the earth

the heel falls correcting the tilt

Chandeliers heave

Marbles Rrrrrr

 

Our skulls your lost beachballs

Somedaysome snake our scarf or rag will loop through our sockets

to polish us

 

 

En Route

Hiding in a tree trunk

Looking through the hollows

Firs in new wedding gowns

Fire budding Christmas trees

 

It was the trees jangling interior bangles

The tigers striped past silently

Rugs on the floor of salvation wood

 

The first time I saw ginseng I understood the body to be root

Until a slice of what I could only call steakwood

 

The river swears it’s blue   will carry you across

Soon as you leap in   fast moving coils

Who said the python’s dead

 

Where is the hatch

Somewhere here but giant roots flowed over

Is it sealed

Bloody me

Will we keep

 

Gone too far free out at sea why does the water wave as if pining

for the ties of Shiva’s braids

The tangles at the fountainhead

From here the view of the dance