11 King Locus

So unlikely! Despite the haphazard planters in the elevator...
the prickly tortoise self-annihilated.


The formerly comatose tiger playing animal rummy in the hammock full of lettuce heads...
false wrappings, falsely prolonged, thrown away with the jugs of corn juice.

Standing on folding chairs, slack-jawed relatives in tiaras and dropcloths...
purple curses, in italics, on their backs...


Moth eaten camels in liberal lighting happily reglue...
broken phonographs.



Mounds of paper horns filled with quinine for the beleaguered masses...
pyramid of masonry buzzards hammered into shards...and shredded wings...

blowing up crates of elevator shoes.


Bobcat and foot-high scissors play out improvised strategies on a garbage can lid...
with emollients and balm bottles.


The sawhorse pencils in King Locus' white and grey hairs...
the way he always liked to draw them.

5 The Anniversary of Years Ago

Nothing abnormal. the anniversary of years ago.

when tiger not (so) comatose, his tiger wife in purple garters
rockin' with big jugs of Halternoose Juice.

the bobcat to go bye-byes
borne on a litter of remarkable italics,
eleven camels darting through new masonry.

she,wife, to furnish properly the Plaza Palace

elevator car, still standing on several sawhorses.


tiger relatives in a prison of their own defects
chew on vulcanized rubber, cactus paddies
and talk of tumbledown Empires

poky little rooms in darkness, and dreams
of enough possessions to throw a bit of trash away

a chorus of crows... sinking into a depression.


A folding chair carved in one piece from a single palm tree.
flashes of unavoidable vision.

antelope flautist with legal-then ivory buckle
fainting onto a mound of oval avocados.

4 The Sawhorse Wasn't There

So, the blithe bobcat, that night, respectfully anointed

an elevator shoe

despite likely annihilation in three minutes,
(and a haphazard burial with planted evidence);

the hammock under the comatose tiger,
the hammock of prickly nooses and purple garters,
rocking both ways over a jug of Corn Juice.


The tiger relatives talk of emollients for a well-lived life,
playing slap jack in the plaza parking lot
in laughably moth-liberal lighting...

the stakes an oval-backed cane chair
'Papa Locus' was sitting in,
a mound of fried starches interlaced
into a greasy pyramid,
and a camel lamp with wings.


Sawhorse was not there tonight
being called away on a repair.
And scissors trapped under upturned and sat-upon trash can
in full dark with shredded will.

All of the tiger's family, including 'Papa'
accomplices in extortion...
more patient than the buzzards
squatting on the masonry.


The bobcat put the anointed elevator shoes on
the one tiger's ears
the way he always liked to wear them.

White hairs, grey hairs
blowing in the hammock's little breeze.