How Dragons Are Not Here.

I talk about dragons in books; and books rhymes with nooks
And everyone hates me because I am a strain, and my voice is
Like a crocodile and I have sharp teeth and the bones melt with bones-
Sometimes, things are broken, and promises are made, and people
Weep, and the canyons are deep as oceans-
Sometimes, I do not know where the canyons are made, or why
They are made, only they are there, only the opinions of things
Are driven out of the land like coyotes, and some Americans
Do not like take-out food, especially not Canadian, French,
Canadian Bacon-I think I like oranges on certain days; I think
I like this or that; and the snow falls down on the Himalayas and sometimes
I look for Big Foot or someone else, someone who is not quite so simple
In his words, or for men with big trucks and yellow gardens,
And how they sod the fields, how they grow corn-some of the corn
Is shaped like diamonds, and some men break their backs on them;
Some of them are tall; others are short; others are like children in their way
And as ghosts; they tell me I cannot speak for them, but I end up writing
About them, how they troll, how they move, and their movement is simple
Like the tides are simple and the ocean is larger than itself-
And how wallabyes look up to us and badgers look up to us and the sounds
Of summer is larger than our eyes, and my teachers expect me to pick up
Their paychecks and not spend it; and how Mr. Millan, the man from the Bronx,
Was shot at the grocery store and he had a limp and it makes him cry every
Night, including on weekends-I do not know about words, only about the spelling
Of them; like the Spelling Bee I won in sixth grade.
These dragons are kind of sort not on my heart or mind and I am forced to realize
Something I have come to know,
That humans are not humans at all, just plants, maybe, like talking trees,
Or words that come out of books, and birds sing their song,
And I am paler than lightning, and lightning is quick and brown and moves like
Sand-
That some sands rise out of nothing, and nothing has become of it. I tiptoe this nothing,
And people don’t want to hear me speak. I ask myself why, and thoughts
Linger in the dark.

In the Doorway.

Time is in what we tell,
and it waits, floating above shadows above,
in a doorway, on wingless arms,
reaching to the still winds of grace,
the sadness of forgotten and mine.
In the wasteland, the old man toils,
and turns and mutters in his house.
The stories are forgotten in minnows;
and the places are mapped out on walls.
The seeds are for granted.
We are not what we do.
No mistaken is for the shadow,
the place beyond the grass-grown walls,
and the temple that overflows.
Ask them, and ye shall receive.
People waking and people sleep.
We wake and we dream and the dreamer's
wake,
shadows mask rinds of time,
space is continual as a drum.
A drumbeat of yours and mine,
continuous in its tomb.
We use imagination as a quarter,
and our face is veiled in the midst.
We use no forms of communication.
We drill holes in West Virginia,
and Fox Mulder pops out,
quick as a rabbit.
We have not given into ourselves.
The rest mock dangerous exits,
and swift movements are mistaken.
We go and we come.
We exit and we leave.
I am not educated. I am not the working.
I am not the dumb and the worried.
I am the heart that is the heart.
I am the door that is left unopen,
the place between sunlight and the daisies,
that rise out of the darkness of nothing,
into the midnight sun.
It is like being something and nothing.
It is like being an orphan when no one speaks.
The sadness is in the silence.
Our hearts and thoughts are quick as lightning bugs.