As I sat on the toilet
of a Boeing 727,
somewhere over Ohio

The Man With the Lepidoptera on His Ass

stands, face to the wall,
butterfly to the camera, needled
back there forty years ago.

WANOKA (AP) Chimney Rock, which stood for centuries on the Oklahoma plain as a towering guide for covered wagons crossing the treacherous Cimarron River, has fallen victim to the same forces which created it. “Moisture and wind, the tools that sculpted it, reduced the eerie formation to a heap of rubble,” said Ernie Crumpler, Oklahoma University geologist.

Sitting down, unfolding
the paper, without looking
you raise the light toward the pipe.

The size of the human brain
increased from the apelike
capacity of 500 cubic centimeters

One fine morning in a bright green garden, an old man sat crying. His beard wound round him like a friendly serpent. The big sky was so blue, and the little birds singing. The smiling sun cast warm nets over him, as the gentle breeze did blow. The old man looked up. His eyes were so red from crying. I want! I want! he cried in his old broken voice.

I have this large tattoo on my chest. It’s like a dream I have while I’m awake. I see it in the mirror as I shave and brush my teeth or when I change my shirt or make love. What can I do? I can’t remember where I got the tattoo. When in the past did I live such a life? 

I dream I hurl a spear into the body of my love. I am brutal, but the spear begins to glow along its shaft and transfixes me. I stand covered in its radiance, unable to move, magnetized towards the spear that I reach out to touch and then grasp and stroke and carry myself forward along its length until I have touched the body of my love itself at the point where the spear has entered. I sob, I shake in convulsions and the body of my love bends forward to comfort me as I support myself against it in a paroxysm of leaving my body.

There was a contest
once
for the best picture
of a peach

When I was a teacher 
I taught the truth, viz., 
The two great levelers are