"All Day Midnight."
"It's late.
Probable preface, too early, too early.
Contortion from the get-go, a boat made of twisted planks.
Giraffes stampede, angels singing.
[INAUDIBLE] formative deformative.
Brooding capers in a jittery slough.
Dropped cherry popsicle.
Finally, you can only trust yourself,
and you can't trust that nitwit either.
Fractional personality disorder trying to get
elected, muscling up on the rowing machines.
The fangs come out.
Glottal avatars rumble in the heather.
It's a battle to the death, or life maybe.
The sort with bed hair and birthday
cake to choke on, while plastered
in the backseat of the wolf mobile.
But this is just another mode of being.
The Greeks had another and the falls.
So too, the mother who collects bridal dolls,
the reason the kids got hitched elsewhere, quick,
and did not return.
They'd like to now, but they don't know how,
having lived so long among the jungle
folk who never ask, just toke and toke, then pogo
and eat roaches.
Earl is his name, Mary Beth hers.
Both are rhomboidal amalgams, fully immersible
and dishwater safe.
Mosh pit asleep, mind in a skillet on low heat,
turning an egg white opaque.
The dream of the talking radish has
troubled Mary Beth, of late.
The radish itself has a small brain and limited experience,
so their verbal parlay isn't that impressive,
if you discount one of the participants being a thumb
sized tuber, a swollen watery root.
But what sort of person could?
Not our Mary Beth.
She knows a jabbering carrot from a sullen rutabaga,
I'll tell you that.
I'll also tell you that the world floats
on the back of a serpent, in a puddle of serpents,
if that'll satisfy you.
I know no one knows your trouble, not troubles,
not the river of bobbing heads, not the tower of bleeding miss.
But hey, no need to get all phlegmy and geodesic.
We're all just trying to push product here,
trying to lose a few pounds and find
our way to the center of the hive,
to proffer our morsel unto the queen."