Palm Springs Stories No. 1

This is probably a love poem. Few are not. You, or he himself   
   (the object)
will ply open this not especial meeting of thread and glue and, say,
   Irish rag (two pound weight)
  ? I do not decide my stock, yet     this right angle where information
   and chewed tree and silk
agree    the signature     and nod, smirk, cough, think you
   know everything

go to hell 
          I am not done lying     and you, or he himself, never stopped

All autobiography is travelogue, map play     some of us just get
   around more

   our beds are plains, the prickly Transvaals dotted with hoofed
   traffic   beasts
with nautilus horns, seven legs, recessed fangs (or wings)
   plus voles, racing
                               headfirst in the underbrush     humble as lint
  our beach towels are as telling as dirty cafeteria trays,
   where monsters pool & flick
in the wet corners         crusty and smelling of sour wheat
  our clothes, stained & obvious as newspapers, commingle & knot     
   make waffled
pyramids, cotton pagodas, damp lighthouses manned by dust mites

Whatever we own or caress or breathe on or slurp or pick at or
   bump against or visit or waste tells on us, spills the beans,
   makes with the goods, testifies   so
    I thrush to print, I publish and perish

In dynastic Egypt, words were procreative carve     “snake”
   into a basalt block, a wall
of crisped mud, or a palm trunk & expect hisses, blinding spit   
   expect diamond heads and pulsing chevrons the carpet viper the
   spotted night adder the bandy-bandy the mulga the lisping
krait the rinkhal     any black and twitching scourge

we know so little magic now

—R. M. VAUGHAN

(Originally published Christmas, 2003.)