“Reality is an illusion,
albeit a very persistent one.”
-Albert Einstein

I flip the pieces ’round themselves
in temper-fits that last for days—
and while it’s true I tell the truth,
it’s only in the thoughtful ways:

the green the pastures tell the cars
as they go by in smoky fog
and revel in the passersby
in burnt out ends of salted hog

is just the sort of self-defeating
admiration of itself
that paints a blue sky out from under
silky black and endless bog!

You see? the pieces fit each other
across the bread in marmalade;
the truth is only true so often
that when it is, I am afraid.

that much about
the pressing issues,
the wars and revolutions,
all universe falling apart
and coming together,

and all of us,
the flesh of us,
going crazy and
coming off the bone—

I’m really a lot
more interested in music,
in the gentleness of thought,
the way in dreams
we find we
stroke the hair of angels,
assign them names that,
while beautiful, can never be true again,
names we’ll never even
remember.

I don’t really care
about the government—
it’ll never work
and they’ll never stop trying;
I wish that all the voters
and the soldiers
and the lovely meter maids
would come and lay with me
with open mouths.