You predict the wave
like the Jets vs. this internal tendency.
I can’t go among my people
with this face that says Reckless
brutal thumbnail image—O dear god.
Take this tongue out of my ear.
Take these pine and cinnamon-scented hands
out of the sink. The village
in my chest, take its idiot savants.
Take me behind the church
with a book of paintings;
the meadow out of my voice.
I have to step outside the elevator
and look back in. My legs
are entirely yours.
My legs don’t fit under the desk.
I can see my tactical teams 
parachuting but never alighting.
They are coming with insular
adoration, with the rum
that will ruin me.
Your love ripples 
across a dossier of sheets.
I tell you one vivid anecdote
after another
before the silver pistol fish is done
moving me into a deep trance.
My memory leaves nothing
but a faint burning odor.
Would that I gave you something
positive to go with; if I led you
into a better world. The doppelganger
hanging by the front door—in theory
she protects the integrity of the derivative.
But I tell you nothing’s wrong
and nothing is. I stay perfectly still
on the edge of a glass box.
I pull an endless invisible scarf
out of my mouth.