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Skin
The snake sheds its skin
Anaconda
King
Rattler
Leaving behind
The dry husk
The process is natural
Like childbirth
It can be painful
The snake is vulnerable
I have shed my skin
Now I see myself
On a hundred deathbeds
Overcome by diseases
Car wrecks
Clumsy falls
Fires and floods
No day is safe
I live at a new address
On an earthquake fault
At night
My sheets are stained with blood
My mother is crying
So much has passed in the year
Since my father died
Now she hears him
As her body struggles with pneumonia
Shedding her skin
Like Anaconda King Rattler
Dark River
There is a black river
Beneath desert sands
A contraption made from skeletal memories
And glass eyeballs
Floats on that dark water
A shadow formed from purple gauze and flayed skin
Sits at the helm of the boat
Peering into depths
Seeking sensation
Or concealed revelation
Embittered by travails
Wracked by obsessions
The stranger submits to sleep
Plucking overripe fruit from tattooed trees
In flame-retardant dreams
Traveling deeper into the Kalahari
Risking everything to discover the secrets
Of the Somnambulists
He wakes intermittently
Every 20 / 30 years
To sip the black water
Then
Plunges backward into dreams
Congealed from daily fictions
Visiting past accomplishments / Pleasures
Reliving ineluctable sensations
pulsating like music in his brain
Then
Crashing / drowning
Gulping the miasmic waters
Going back for more
Rounding the bend in the black river
An avatar in waiting
Stands 8 feet tall
Dark as volcanic rock
With spear / shield / machine gun
Teeth like sharp granite
The boat of eyeballs and memories dissolves
Water recedes
Mud turns dry and cracked
The dream broken like potshards on ancient ground
The man cut down
Turned to desert dust
How It Ends
Pods have been planted
And nourished with blood
One old lady knits in her rocker
Her basket of yarn
A nest for an Uzi
She is guarding the pods
Some events
Trigger a chain reaction
The ships have landed
My father was witness
First casualty
Dead with no pod to replace him
I saw them reinsert his tongue
Now / nothing will be the same
The old lady with the Uzi
Opens her mouth / a black hole
Now I know
I am one of them
One of the pod people
Born in a burning bush
I take the place
Of my father
Nothing remains the same
We Do It All For You
Luminous chickens cluck at me
I’m frantic
And tear at my hair
Red-and-blue chickens are staring
- Whoa boy -
Gigantic chickens are dancing
On the pin of my head
My fingers are melting
Horny-toad chickens attack my body
I’m out of control
My fingers are running away from me
I’m plucked naked
Big chickens stuff me with grease
My fingers have forsaken me
- oh no -
Colonel Chicken’s got an extra crispy
Secret recipe
-Lee Balan, Palm Springs
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