Dear Phil

A thousand years ago we might have been enemies / in some war over sugar

A thousand years ago we might have been enemies
in some war over sugar, some war children slept through
between De Soto crossing the Mississippi and the Incans
and Thor becoming separate sentences in the Book
of Lost Things. On Earth all intentions sour
like tragedy gets funny and capitalism works. I myself
have forgotten the good words my pastor taught me
to keep the self walking closer to the vanishing point
and my credit score’s the equal of a blindfolded arsonist
made to walk a plank above the grandest canyon. Which only means
I’m like every boy, there’s a little death in me that wants
to get out and it’s no bigger than these caterpillars
I’ve doodled to resemble eyebrows in the book I’m reading
about all the old ways people could rend a soul out of
the sinner. Example: a long stick through the nose.
Also: knots tied to every limb and pulled. It’s ghastly
what most humans do when bored: juggle bowling pins or turn
simple cats to flame like they just learned disaster
comes from the Greek and means bad star. This didn’t start dark
but then how often the head is surprised to feel its own hands
at its throat. The knife in the spine and the faint taste of poison,
the gross picnic beneath a laughing sky. I’ll wear bells and taste copper
in my oatmeal forever if it means all failure given back ten-fold
in the form of happy pills, well-loved poems, days where the sun wins
and children fall from trees unafraid of broken bones. Where entire years go
and I convince nobody to buy my shiniest knives that cut through
everything: a child king’s soda can. The molten earth. But magic isn’t magic
if you see the diamond in the palm, the flower petals lodged
to the bridge of a mouth, the sleeve full of matches
in a hall of mirrors and all of the mirrors are flames.
Like building a house out of wind you can get nowhere fast
if you’re careful. This is to inform you I have given away my monopoly
on throwing rocks into pools at parties. I suppose there is pleasure in Tokyo
I will never know about. Pleasure in Istanbul and Eritrea. Moths now
where before was only the suggestion of beauty. What seems like joy
is often joy, Kaveh said. God’s gift is to be indistinguishable
from nothing. Corn or human. Giraffe or bird. My favorite metaphor
is universe-as-slumlord who always gets its cut of entropy
and everything wants to disperse. To heaven a raised fist
is another animal or all the same. Kiss your own hand in the shower
if it makes a difference. Pull a hat out of a rabbit. William Tell
everything that keeps us bad. Needle god’s arm with whatever
makes us love this dirt. Which is the mirror and which is the object
I’ll never be sure. The universe is full of back doors
and rugs concealing hidden passages, particles in the air
where there isn’t even air, years of cows walking backwards
into oceans, entire valleys flooded and reflooded because ruin
begets ruin, galaxies behind stars and great animals long dead
we can only visit deep in earth or dream. My glories are coins
and yours are antlers and those are the rules of this poem
which is a telescope or microscope or simply pathetic fallacy
magnified by the sadness of being. A kite leapt from the hand
playing toy boat along a skirt of clouds. These are my water wings.
If we are ever at war I will give you the diamond behind your ear
and you can mortar bombs of cotton candy, the both of us saying if
I weren’t so broken I could love my silly hat the shape of an apple,
the shape of lightning, the shape of a cloud that holds the lightning.