The snails in my dreams radiate stillness. 
The world is a gleam in the eye of 
a dead hog, hung upside down, waiting 
to be gutted by a forlorn butcher.  
 
The older I get, the smaller I feel. 
In a decade, I will be my own son, 
a toddler craning my neck upward  
at a balloon stuck in a skylight. 
 
There’s always an ant under the eyelid 
to ponder. My neighbors all look either  
like Hittite cuneiform or like woodcut  
illustrations of Spinoza’s philosophy.  
 
Sadly, I’m an insomniac dormouse 
eavesdropping on a war report issuing 
through a tiny Victrola in a tongue 
my mother knew in her girlhood.     
 
I sleep inside the smallest stone 
where my words unfold like flowers, 
clasp-knives, star charts, old lawn chairs, 
an origami swan doused with kerosene. 
 
I’m ascending an ivory escalator of doves.  
I browse through bins of malignant toys.  
Tyrants tend not to clip their fingernails. 
All my eyelashes point to heaven.