Dear Reader

My nightmares are your confetti

so you may step over tiny skulls

like a satrap among un-housebroken whippets.

The sour diapers of morning

give way to the overripe plums of noon

give way to the designer cheeses of evening.

Then night is no one’s problem,

how tender it is with its murderers,

how consoling to its trillionaires,

that lost spaceman music in the pines,

god opening his box of fishhooks.

Dear Reader, I thought

I was prepared but I’m never

prepared but please, take this,

it is your lift ticket, your perfume

that lingers in the fire-fickled room

long after you’ve vamoosed

and made that poor boy nursing

his third cinnamon daiquiri

realize he missed his chance,

your bones already asterisks,

your chipmunk glance a schwa.