Prelude to Impalement Arts

In my half world and your half world
the same street is simmering
we pass racks in dreams
looking over tides of bruising color
to see if the other notices wind
testing the windows
until the frames bend like an organ of time
expect a duck to swallow a whole river
and explode into a pile of oily dominoes.

I wasn't waiting in my infant body
to become a man, anymore
than I would wait in my sternum's rug
for death before we move and move
who cares whether it's a canal or a river,
an ocean or a mirror, a neighborhood quaking
or a barstool spinning like a hubcap
we'll slide down a vast fall of linguini
fresh from water and spice and land
on moss-furred mound of ancient tires,
spelling lives with all the arrows that have missed
until the raw forms shine through
like a shark's head in a basket of biscuits.