I take the dead snake skins

of my past lives and tie them together

across a golden road.

I watch the toads hop

out of the grass onto the steaming tar.

They encircle me with croak-song

and I am careful in my spinning dance.

Trees groan prettily behind swamp trenches

the honeysuckle smooths the breeze.

In my moon bruised incarnation

I take on the improbable shine

of the southern magnolia.

Nymphs with lovely psycho eyes

are coming to carry me away and

hurl me down on the painful pleasures

of a thistle bed.

They can have the magic

of my milky spine

they can sever my selfish head

and with pink thread sow it on again.

They can see if the hair on my body

moves like seaweed

in their bath of sacred potion

or the crimson of alchemical wind.