you can mutate yourself
like a red cloth 
over a still life
of green fruits

you can mutate the answer
to the email
you got yesterday from your
neighbor whom you hate
you can mutate him
into a donkey
or an embryo
floating in a butterfly jar
of silver gray twilight

i mutate the painting
into sequencing,
into a defibrillator
placed upright
at the museum of modern art
a child asks
what it is
it is a very
expensive defibrillator
standing upright
on the hard marble floor
you can press the defibrillator
against this mutated
child-face
and maybe get an answer
of green plasma
or something like that

or you can slice off
your spine
and hang it above a bed
watch it spin like a mobile
above the babys’s wide-open eyes
it is a more beautiful kind of day
after all

to petrify the octopus
into hardness, and wear it
as a mutation
on the back instead of a
spine

i love the word spine
i often think of it
before i disappear into
the interface and close it there
close the face, this mutated
child-face
like a working document
or a preliminary investigation
of grass in
this mutated armpit of gold