THE BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH, MY DEAR

With a series of tortuous devices
bringing us back to the scene of our crimes:
TV westerns, guns and drums
your songs and flutes trilling and warbling
we follow you back from the brink
of our phony deaths.
You make such international crises of the earth's spin
and of planets you conquer on paper, we get back on.

You take our alphabet, teach us it is disabled
while you are surging something softly green
bursting over walls and papers.
We rouse from fantasies and foibles
to your throbbing dancing syllables
as though to lure them into crippled lexicons.

But a dream keeps us sleeping. It is not your dream.
You howl to be let in, then to be let out again
until you wreck all dreaming, and what do you bring?
Hollywood chess sets Monopoly games.
With paints in hand, sandcastles at your feet
costumed as princess gypsy teen-age dwarf
pleading with us to come into your dream
you are warm beagle-eyed young, great temptress!

I say, Let's pretend I fit into your dream a moment
but I, who am calloused past innocence,
will be imaged wolf in grandma's gown.
You win all the Monopoly games, checkmate my queen.
I say, Here is my broken globe. Fix it.