Last Thrift.
The feeling inside my apartment seems
to require cat hair everywhere and joyful, anxious, sick people.
Ack, am I careening?
Pandemically and regrettably yours, yes,
pickled we plotz, blips to loop an empanada
from the throngified bikeways thwacked
with zombified droplets.
I did glove that empanada in a hospicity
'cause my borrowed blue bandana's
a portal to zebraic tenderness.
So I flame on and splay hlome and bug out discretely,
bumming antenna from broken bodies.
Sometimes, the roachies in the wall
mutter in disbelief at the notion.
Purple Rain was Prince's idea of a Bob Seger imitation
and pour from invisible cracks to form a giant crystal question
mark that refuses to writhe or scurry with a shadow broken
into a grin from which some golden-egg tempera paint is
flowing, bypassing demons to form a ladder made of bluebells.
And the tigers are recovering, and the girls
are inspecting the pink fire escape for slants of light.
And inside, the hairy Siberians, Nesh and Frankie,
embody a nodding question, furry spoon by furry spoon.
For Ron Padgett.