Bellowing
skull heavy with brains
of pale prunes,

Ailing, alien, alone,
are you ill in your ear or in error?

The café walls are covered with pictures of flying parrots;
I take a table, rest my arms; the table gently tips,
A dozen strangers sit and sit and talk, all they do is lovely,

After midnight, lying in bed thinking of you,
I heard a squeal, and let the cigarette fall
From my fingers like a petal, as I watched the window open

Enough inside jokes,
let's move this bash out
under the stars. Heap up

I awake, three in the morning, sweating
from a dream of possums.
I put my head under the fuzzy swamp of cover.

I understand:
for years, perhaps, you have lived
underground. Handling only

Some loved their camels more than their
Own brothers. One of them once bit
A live crocodile. One fell stupidly in love

I don’t think you could have called it
A true tongue until the forty-first night

Thrust out of lips’
thick glottal languishings
a thrashing labyrinth