A POEM, brought to you by DICK FANCY

 Letter to the Future

Peaked and dipped, the crusty

earth—just a punched-in

punk—stumbled into itself in drunk

heaviness. Ribbons of salt

like a letter left to the future:

Dear Someone,

Once, I was thirsty.

Dear You,

Once I had not one drop of water to suck

and then I had too much. Guzzled it

up, fell languid into a bed of myself

because when you are everything, there is nowhere

else to go. My shoulders—bone

spurs, struck rocks, hunched and

painful, lopped by the wicked

sun who, himself, was cast out

of cool dark (the ideal

circumstances for celestial

hunkering) by the moon, soul-

sick of that quick-lash

tongue, passion's stove-

hot fingertips.

The Moon grew sullen, elusive

while the sun roared his complaints:

“I need my feet out while we sleep, the blinds drawn so I might wake with myself in my eyes.”

Talk of narcissism, selfishness. Love

for Love's sake. The Sun

slunk off, door-slamming. Rocks trembled,

mountains erupting in fire, burning

flesh to ash. All the wing-ed

things that might have risen

then burned too.

Dear Someone,

It is impossible

not to be thirsty in the desert. The word alone

recalls fable: mirage: drought.

Men in robes, staffs, Talmudic tablets of rough-hewn

stone. Dry heels skidding endless along open, empty

mouths of streams. Impossible

not to witness your own simple un-cloying aloneness

when staring out the small round window of a plane

into that vast hilly grave, 

girded by water, but without

privilege ever to gulp it.

Dear Someone,

Should ever I put mouth

to clear unsalted stream, I would 

suck the spout dry. In this mirage,

there is no space for self-control. In this mirage,

we are birds and I spit

half of what I've drunk into your leaned-back throat.

Were we to un-change, re-turn—

non-birds—to the drudge of human skin,

I would beg Dear Sweet Mirage

on dusty kneecap

to turn us so again.

And were we to emerge clipped

of wing—some punishment

dolled to the perpetually

dissatisfied—we might

huddle together in some furrow,

shivering ourselves asleep, releasing

unspent anguish with chirp-moans, blood

freezing solid while the moon grew

fat.

(At night, the Moon

tucks the covers

tight beneath the mattress.

(It was this transgression

destroyed all those trees.))