What’s afforded the world 

that I’ve tamped in this tangram 
skull some thirty-six years ago—
 
The bored-out chest
of a tree, drawn into
a crackling seam of
venous and dulcetly
pulsing, poster-paint
coleus fronds in un-
plumbable neon, a
torpor of buoying
bouillabaisse, bent 
bismuth crystals teased 
to a cereal maze tattooed
on the back of a kneecap,
seeming a malt liquor rebus—now, to think
 
what they might just do 
with my body. And yet,
I’m bound by law to be
 
buried. Who the fuck
still thinks that’s real-
ly honoring anything
other than maybe pre-
serving some space for
a stone-studded nature
sanctuary—as though
I could afford to be
buried in what 
blanched, mold-
wracked crack of
a landfill anyhow. Might
 
as well bury my soul in my
scowl now, carrot sticks 
stippling hoodoos. See
it peek out in a whac-
a-mole fashion with
each fresh sheep’s-
weed flower grown
gold as the sun, with
the eggshell sutures
chewing the roads 
back together for
fear of relentless
weeds and worms
and weather—would,
 
maybe, I seem more
alive should a spider-
web stent my neck, like
the bone laced under the
whale’s erection—I once
made a joke at my brother’s 
funeral, hoping to jostle him
out of the ashes in glibly com-
paring him but to a big blue whale 
in every measure. It, clear as the
sun sets under The Brothers, Mt.
Constance, bristled Olympus, and
notch-like old Lost Pass pressed into
a rain-runny thumbprint; clearly did not
get the job done—Maybe, I’d be a bit
better as skunked Manischewitz and brittle
communion wafers—then my body might just
mean something, something other than trash 
pit, void, and playground—as though one’d
dare find fault with a playground,
barring a faulty contraption or two
bent hungrily fumbling taffy-
taut childhood into a lab-
yrinth rat race, daring
dear, overgrown chi-
ldren to dare if the
wonky and wob-
bly world was
safe and play- 
ful—still—
 
struck listless and stiff 
as a swing set, rust 
collects around
restless sinew; what
some chapped rubber seat
repurposed from tire tread
dare should shoulder,
drawn to a dreadful
simper, slouching,
snickering, smirking