The Weasels of Madness
Grandmother, the weasels of madness are chewing through the fabric of sleep and the furniture is a party of ghosts dancing on a lawn.
The doilies of your memory are paper airplanes soaring into a holocaust of wind, a puzzle of teeth in a blender of breadfruit punch.
And the song of dead ladies plays on a phonograph of mouse eyes and periwinkle shells as a parade of zombies marches into the dandelion factory.
Grandmother, the dead sparrows in Harry Smith's freezer keep calling on the phone peeping alchemical secrets in a dialect of bird I cannot understand.
I wander the streets collecting the lone shoes of lost bums, pages from books by L. Ron Hubbard, plastic hubcaps, a pamphlet of Christian psalms.
Behind the building where I live an old man squats and shits beside a parked Buick. We are both Americans. We have rights.
Grandmother, what does any of this have to do with you in 1973 chain smoking Parliaments, knitting Christmas sweaters, throwing back your head to laugh at that idiot Maxwell Smart?
Your teeth soak in their glass on the table in the slanted kitchen of my memory where the white dogs bark at the dinner plates.
Take my hand woman of illusions. We are all walking into the sea. Old boats are beached on building tops.