The river is high. I'd love to smoke pot

with the river. I'd love it if rain

sat at my table and told me what it's like

to lick Edith Piaf's grave. I go along thinking

I'm separate from trash day

and the weird hairdo my cat wakes up with

but I am of the avalanche

as much as I am its tambourine.

The river is crashing against my sleep

like it took applause apart and put it back together

as a riot of wet mouths

adoring my ears, is over my head

when it explains string theory

and affection to me,

when it tells me to be the code breaker,

not the code. What does that mean?

Why does lyric poetry exist?

When will water open its mouth

and tell us how to be clouds, how to rise

and morph and die and flourish and be reborn

all at the same time, all without caring

if we have food in our teeth or teeth in our eyes

or hair in our soup or a piano in our pockets,

just play the damned tune. The river is bipolar

but has flushed its meds, I'm dead

but someone has to finish all the cheese

in the fridge, we're a failed species

if suction cups are important, if intelligence

isn't graded on a curve,

but if desperation counts, if thunderstorms

are the noise in our heads given a hall pass

and rivers swell because orchestras

aren't always there when we need them, well then,

I still don't know a thing.

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