THE COLLECTION

I bring everything I find.
Not everything that glitters is gold.
But I pick up
everything that glitters.

In the drawer an old-clo’-man’s collection.
Bits of chrome.  A key without legs.
A multiple-toothed nail.  Which I run from outside,
like a cave strange beast, which I cross like an arrow in the brow.

Which I entirely outside watch.  In everything multiple-eyes.
Bits of nickel, chrome, iron,
I can’t tell from what it comes.
Leftover bones.  Leg hair.  From whom?

All this laid out when I cross streets.
Lessen our flesh from car lust, thoughts on the way, a turn, a trap,
                                                                  iron falls from the powers.
Everyone says his.  Everyone stares me in the hands.
Not everything that glitters is gold.

But everyone wants for the collection.
All this floodfall, all this yield, all this weevilrat, to enter
the collection.  And I pick up
everything I find.

THE COLLECTION