When I was a child, albeit 

obsessed with the measures of Jupiter,
      two-foot-two and counting, I’d
glibly attempt by skull-soft will alone
to fold all these taffy-pulled bones,
this overwrought paper airplane sloppily
creased around powdery tack and fatback,
 
into some spunky homunculus, one 
who could scarcely lick 
all the paint from a pinhead, who’d
braided her belt from a
    fuse seduced from a
    strangled arrangement 
    of rain-freaked lady fingers, 
                            who’d painted
    her cheeks with the rouge scratched 
    clean from the pudding-skin cheeks 
    of a matchstick, cudding
    through jungles of clover and envious
    violets, swinging a dandy machete she’d
    whetted on ruinous ironweed, gleaned
    from the pubic-hair rib of a slain sardine,
    who’d summon a thimble of blood 
    from the mewling turnips, 
    the dust-wan runts kicked
    braying abreast of the dirt 
    by the rest of their swollen brethren—
 
I’m reminded of that cracked will now, wondering
why would my neighbor have mowed all my mint down,
shaved to a stubble, the elfin thyme gone
blue as the svelte and contortionist, dwarven
spruce. A few frail coils of mint and bee balm
quiver now over the egg-shell ruins, the
off-white paint flecks festering, curdling,
coiled like crumpled up paper airplanes,
gutted remains of robin’s eggs jays or
cuckoos had sucked all the color from.