I hang my face in the wardrobe,
stick my feet below,
step out onto the floor
and cry for Mommy
as giant birds come running,
snapping at my shirt sleeves
from above

I spread out
across Nevada,
no thirst in sight

The books hide
behind rattling letters
all the way to the horizon,

frightened words clawing
and climbing
over each other
like passengers on a sinking ship;
a swelling wave
of cut-up poems
and dismembered expressions
desperately scrambling
to get out of the way
of the murderous printing press
approaching across the Great Basin
between the Wasatch Range and Sierra Nevada
at a power of 104 kilotons,
to sentence them all
in the dictatorship's fear
of the free word,
fulfilling the role
of the frightened leader
to the letter

my arms tired of waiting
for any measure
the world might take
as the skeleton keeps making blood
and my thoughts run up
against shapes and signs,
seasons and warheads
beyond the future that bends
into the flat out,
the might as well,
the once in a while,
the once and for all