My Kingdom for a Murmur of Fanfare

It’s common to live properly, to pretend

you don’t feel heat or grief: wave nightly

at Miss Fugue and Mister Goggles before diving

into your nightcap, before reading yourself

a bedtime story or watching your beloved sink

to the bottom of a lake and noting his absence

in your log. The next day you drop his clothes off

at Goodwill like a sack of mail from a warplane

then hobble back to your hovel like a knight moving

only in Ls. It is comfortable to be alive this way,

especially now, but it makes you so vulnerable to shock — 

you ignore the mortgage and find a falconer’s glove

in your yard, whole hand still inside. Or you arrive home

after a long day to discover your children have grown

suddenly hideous and unlovable. What I’m trying

to say is I think it’s okay to accelerate around

corners, to grunt back at the mailman and swallow all

your laundry quarters. So much of everything is dumb

baffle: water puts out fire, my diseases can become

your diseases, and two hounds will fight over a feather

because feathers are strange. All I want is to finally

take off my cowboy hat and show you my jeweled

horns. If we slow dance I will ask you not to tug

on them but secretly I will want that very much.