Hey! Its a crazy world, this

battered series of perceptions,

the red indolent glazing

of her tongued hibiscus, shivering

and staggering at 3 am on A Sunday

before the papers and the spiritual

assembly has arrived, alas

(we live in separate monadic episodes

carved in the ivory of temporal lobes)

the tedium of the locomotive squealing

the arbitrary corundum-hard gaze of

morning apparitions and symbolic

quiescence in the shimmering doldrums

of laconic light.

Events unfold and loom before us

like an argon mask bubbling in the antique atmosphere

there lie the elephants: slow-mating,

not-forgetting death mounds splayed in the

African sun, maps of themselves lying in

a naked reality of soil like the Borges

tale rotting in the blunt Auschwitz terrain

of the ivory butcher's perfumed massacre.

Information flows, great networks interconnecting

with spatial liquidity in the dust-wrung air, speaks

of how we are moving towards a frightening conclusion:

only the distant buzzing of flies can alleviate

the painful squeeze of the dolomitic air.

Then there is the matter of the elephants and to be

morbidly tattooed with the excrement of your own flesh

to be held soft by a lover in the arcane world of hope,

to dance in the erotic foliage of the trill invincible air,

of the same stuff as the elephant once breathed.

(flesh eating rock can be carved

the same as ivory)

II

That the excrement of vultures is white fecal paint

on the kabuki face of death is perhaps a detail that

goes unnoticed in the living rooms of most Americans

and their kin, while grandma that illusive wisp of a woman

offers up

nothing more of herself than recipes, weather reports

and medical synopses

prepares dinner

when

from nowhere she pictures a vulture tearing

flesh and screams, drops dinner, chicken in

white flour, the color of vulture droppings,

goes everywhere and the family comes a runnin'

she stares (

eyes white ( as titanium oxide

she glimpsed the other side

the magic underbelly )

of every moment )

vast oceans of understanding

thunder and roar in her ears

stones are gathering under the Earth's

crust, under the weight of the dead pachyderms

she feels magma pouring into voids

the ecclesiastic pull of hydrothermal liquids

warring elements of dark metallic species

bubbling in a matrix of crystalline complexity.

III

Give them proper burial!

I find myself screaming

from a dark pulpit, neon

signs flash around, strange

shadows, half shadows, penumbral

scents drifting in and out of

consciousness, give them

linkage, allow them to converge

on holy ground, allow them

more than hollow dignity --

protect them from

the discrete estimators

of human indifference.

IV

Awake, early morning,

thinking of the elephants: my own

transformation, Once I sized up

ivory for the taking, rented planes

to search the interior, elaborate

plans, expectations that everything would

be provided on time for GREAT WHITE HUNTER, darting

amongst elephant legs and trunks.

V

We are a delicate breed of

sardonic wits: murdered commuters no

less innocent than the elephants, boiled

in our sad tanks on the way home from

work -- relieved of our duties, fired

terminated, canned.

There is no death 'cept the cool

breath which seeps in under the door

and how you learn to live with it

and how you learn to score

but, then again

the elephants were killed by family men

to support children, aspirations, dreams

of a better life (career goal: ivory

poacher, unlikely), they were slaughtered

by men with values of their own, religious

icons kept around the house, night school,

learn dry wall, computers,

estimate the size of your own superstition

earn money in your sleep

learn to be good neighbor

to everyone, but large gray

quadrupeds, I remember Babar, like

it was yesterday, he had charisma

he was Eur-African/Asian, the ear size

is how you tell and I can't quite remember

his, but nonetheless

where everything leaves its own scent

the earth becomes

a complex of

distant

rain.

VI

‘cept perhaps North Korea. Does North

Korea have zoos: elephants? Poems not allowed

Political rituals -- bombast

spread wide as the wings

of vultures. Everyone gathers

in a large room, Piss on the dictator:

someone might be thinking

but he ain't saying. He might be

dreaming of elephants who dance

in a circus, somewhere distant

with candy and popcorn.

VII

Am alone in my room again

focused on primal dirt

distracted by an electronic medium

I don't understand

pretending some modicum of normalcy

amidst the rotting flesh of

uncomfortable circumstance

the thorough and precise slaughter

of all relevant ideas for a vague

trophy with which to wave about and

how the language of randomness let's

you take your place among

several billion souls

you could be an elephant hunter

or the buyer of ivory, you could

wear a hollow smile and rehearse how

to appear at parties, as though everything

is explainable in quick pithy staccato,

as though anybody gives a

damn about the unlucky few.

You could stare at the elephants lying,

couldn’t you? Emptying every other glass

of wine with a shrill laugh and a sense

of abandon.