What Comes and Goes

I can't feel my toes in the cabbage garden under the bridge while the man burns a paper bag and the mellon is rotten, not fit for eating and the stars are all shaken, bent, and bleeding. The world is broken with the alligator in the yard and the picket fence blue under the jello mold; I start to sing and the earth quakes with the candy falling from the yellow clouds but landing in the mud puddles; the volume is too low and the love is muddled. Oh, but we need it all so bad, and I'm glad but it just makes me so sad if my marker is lost and the comb is driving, the yellow line weaving, the gears are all stopping; I yell from the roof and dive into the coral that s red and orange with eyes and a mask. The mask? The mask; it's gone and I'm lost but I know that you're there; but there's such a cost that I'd rather not think about.

Reaching out to the wave where you're floating, I hold onto my sweatshirt and pray for a sun shower; we haven't seen such a good person in so long. And the hippo is gone from her desk, anyway. The message is on the underside of the ship. I turn a summersault and find I m breathing deeper and deeper, until I drown in the curtain of glitter and the fish breaks through to kiss me on the cheek. But I can't feel my toes; I can t feel my toes. So, just ignore the sensation of this wonderful elation, because the heron is jealous of my purse on the beach in the foam; pride helps and hurts the stuffed animals, filling them with sawdust. Add a penny to the jar.

I can't feel my toes as I flip through the pages, the days all filled, our time is erased. And the calendar is a terrible disease; it breaths and operates with a dirty needle and kool-aid anti-septic. Up on the cliffs, a car is waiting to wind to the top and catch the paper plane that waits in the tree. The kite keeps it company. Although the day is ending and the circus is in town, the clowns - oh, the clowns we've got here - have found the cave of the mermaids and the giant red rubber ball. Jump on the raft and go past the crags under the hot air balloon with the polar bear inside, eating a sandwich wrapped in rainbows. I'd tell you how if I knew why it snows. But my toes, my toes.

I wish I knew where I want to be and what I want to go.

But I can't feel my toes as I drive.