from Telephone

from Telephone

from Telephone

3

What’s given by the blast
is deep rain, an orgy of worms. Trees
shake their manes, each branch a business
of sexy division. Each bud has a drop for aureole
I want you to touch. Spring, and all
that.
We must have kissed a hundred times
in rain like this: I fell flat on my back
in a field; we waltzed about the fountain in that
Barcelona square, fought like
cats and dogs, and made up; or when I
dropped the bottle we were keeping
and it crashed a gloria of crimson rivulets.
You took me home, all the same.
                                    All the same,
the blasting veteran on our bus home
wields his unbusy stump.
It never buds purple moles,
explodes wild carrot. It stays the same.

              That’s why in your arms I sing
the man with a data drive embedded
where his finger was,
                         a virtual place
where anyone can wield six
lobster claws,
            Max the robot cat, the device
you hold aloft when you don’t know
what’s playing
            on the jukebox, even
our ultimate uploading to the internet;
              and the world-altering pill
I take so that we make nothing
with our love,
            all these years,
only my crazy new hairdo,
wet and wild against a field of white pillow,
and the maddening blip of your phone,
a little machine
demanding to be plugged in again.