A Dream of the Rood

Part I

As in the dream I had last night, I found a baby in a cardboard box, and a port-o-potty spilled a flood of shit and half-dissolved toilet paper on my legs. I had an old lacquered high- chair and a wooden hairbrush. And you were there, and you, and even you. I wrote my gospel on a post-it: Help me with my handstand. Cushion my nether-region, my falling party-favor, I like the duck, duck, goose. As in how lilies taste like bitter religion. As in my tongue on the oak tree’s trunk, on the rigid bark, feeling for devil-worms. Nevertheless, not the tree of victory. Not the hollyhock. Not the last bleat of the lonesome goat. We are all thrumming from within our fatty lobes. The death warrant arrived via prosopopeiac vision. The Man with his list of who behaved this way, and who behaved that way. He asked me if I was a Catholic, and I couldn’t answer yes. He waved a signal in my face, a beacon, and I shuddered to think of the loop-hole, of the compact, burning punishment. Of the way dry-rotted barn beams tremble and bend.

Part II

As in the dream I had last night, my old mechanic was elected president, and we fucked on a weight bench until my triceps throbbed and buckled. If I have five jewels, they are imbedded in my breastbone. The wood is sweating. I am sweating. Then we chased the vision of the babbling sequoia. However it was bleeding—it ripped the sky open. There is the fancy mead-hall table with God and Jesus and all-saints. There is the plump turkey leg. There is a shinier version of myself, all wrapped around with gold and silver garments. Always I will fear the signal, and brandish it mightily. And so the Man and his right hand. And so the filth-bearing owl. And so a tree above all other trees. For then once a man asked me to marry him in a rotted-out redwood trunk. Then we drank wine and rubbed the dusky walls with our backs. If I have four corners they are spread thinly. If I have a foot in each dimension, I am doing the galactic splits. If, in the night, the cross stalks me, I will bear witness to its maleficent greed, to its splintered breath and carnal haste.