08. snake charmers

i hereby declare

i love the implication

of a

lean menace, with hands of

teeming cloud,

who smells of dried apricot

and sings songs of the forlorn.

if drive could be concentrated and canned,

if tattoos could tell the time,

that would be the world my menace lives in.

but here

no image tells the future,

because it only knows the past.

i am an asp who follows the linen folds of unmade beds

and I am open-ended as the bay

awaiting a storm to cradle.