Zero

Spin and spill, crash and bounce,
circumambulate the horizon.
Hug your knees and roll,
pick yourself up and giggle.

I never know when
to jump up or sit still.
The coyote couldn't keep himself
from falling off the cliff.

The little dog nips at my heels.
Is it love,
or do I pick him up
and punt him like a football?

The sun pops up smiling
like a big fried egg.
Radiant and delicious,
he nourishes all of his children.

I walk the ridge,
skimming the outskirts' edge,
shaking my rattle
at the cartoon shrubbery.

The happy dancing vegetables
boogie with the kings of Byzantium.
Don't drink the water
or you'll turn into a tree.

Don't dare to look them in the eye
or you'll be reduced to granola.
Your paranoia is very very real;
I'm glad I'm not in your Birkenstocks.

I put my head into the ether,
not the oven;
cloud-hopping, leaping over
airplanes and flocks of geese,

dizzying pterodactyl flights
around the stone tower,
bunji-jumps to Saturn,
spelunking in melted marshmallow Valhalla.

Astrally hitchhiking around
the hundred and fifteenth bardo,
you look down and realize
that your shoes have come untied,

and you don't have a cup to piss in.
The grasshopper is fiddling
as Newark burns;
the ant has committed suicide.

Jump about and flail your arms,
hit the ground running,
drop, rock and roll,
and keep that goddamn dog on a leash.

The scaly, jeweled queens of Atlantis,
in all of their briny splendor,
could not suss me out
in their continental trenches.

The bird-princes of Babylon
could not build a tower
high enough to catch me
in their sparkling, silver nets.

The lazy snake dreams
of an egg that it ate,
then waking, swallows it's tail
and spits out the universe
...again.

David Aronson
September 2009