Two Poems

The Head Is Shorn

The head is shorn and bristling
and once you look at the neat row
of staples cinching skin closed
above the hairline, it is hard to look
away: the metal teeth glint like
a zipper sewn shut and the skin
holds no pucker on either side
of the seam: this is fine upholstery,
you think, above re-soldered
bone: a saw has been used
and probably pincers to tug
the scalp taut while a somewhat
gentle staple gun riveted the length
of the opening neat as railroad
ties seen from the window of a plane.
All of this is as real and quiet
as a hammer on a table. It is
not the stuff of summer cinema.
For that you must leave the brain
injury unit and go into an ocean
made of hair or a forest of woven
bird-bones where wind rasps
through the honeycombed wood
and out across the tufted sea
where you will relearn to swim.
You are beginning to resent this
second-person bullshit that keeps
announcing how things will be,
as if you are not an independent
choice-maker, as if you have been
so conditioned by various author-
ities that you will simply relearn
to swim in an ocean made of hair
simply because you have been told.
At first you hold your breath
while plunging into the giving
depths but after a while you
realize your mind has been un-
casked without leaving a mark
and so you float above the soft
undulations of hair spread wide
your sex tingling as you seek
out another of your own kind.

Eavesdropping

Every day people walk
in circles on a footpath
designed specifically for that purpose

around a lake near my house.
When the clockwise
pass the counter-clockwise

about four seconds
of conversation
can be overheard

prompting my friend and I
to generate haiku
of dark provocation:

With enough gasoline
nearly anything
will burn.

A matter-of-fact tone
is important.

I don’t know why
she quit loving him
at exactly three o’clock.

Let questions linger.

How do you know
a human head
won’t float?

The manner
must be lackadaisical
yet understated.

The problem with the twins
was that one of them
was a triplet.

It is a form
Ibsen would appreciate.
Or Beckett.

What does he expect me to do
with six hundred pounds
of nut-meats.

Let the final syllable
carry the freight.

If he was insinuating
what I think he was
then-

If any response
is generated,
it must be ignored.

Wrap it in plastic
and bury it
next to all the others.