Molecular fretwork pulls in the signal, televises
my motorbike's roller-coaster xylophones
in tandem, and I can only guess it's about love.
I'm drawn by the allure of your leg muscles'
flavorings of astonishment. But can we afford
this sputter of yogic slogans long enough
to elevate your retro-spin clavicle into its stroke
of violoncello? Penetralia aside, all we unplug
is our selves, the viscous longing we hear slicing
moonbeams from trees. There's no gateway
like the mouths of giants for this, or in the less-
kept secret of lavender, my seismic bedtime
workhorse. Short of clandestine, unbroken
love is about how much more the dolphin
of sleep craves our extinction's crash. And yet
in this bumper-car household of elves
we smash portraits on over-greased mantelpieces
to wax more than mechanical. No longer
brides, we magazine fractured god-berries, collect
toadstools, kneel inside a hover of cliffs, melt
in the buzz of tongue-kisses gifted before names
are exchanged or purses looted. Geothermal
boredom your skin's vortices minus the tantric
stammer this precise species of hominids
can unlock. I squirrel blind earthquakes in each
shirt pocket even as my cat purringly returns
my best slow-blink, levitates me toward my place
among her flowerbed of mouthwatering stars.
Bobby Parrott was obviously placed on this planet in error. In his own words, “The intentions of trees are a form of loneliness we climb like a ladder.” His poems appear or are forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, RHINO Poetry, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Poetic Sun, Clade Song, Rabid Oak, and elsewhere. He currently finds himself immersed in a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles, dreaming himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule called Fort Collins, Colorado where he lives with his houseplant Zebrina and his wind-up robot Nordstrom.