I'm sorry I was late. I was pulled over by a cop for driving blindfolded with a raspberry-scented candle flickering in my mouth. I'm sorry I was late. I was on my way when I felt a plot thickening in my arm. I have a fear of heights. Luckily the Earth is on the second floor of the universe. I am not the egg man. I am the owl who just witnessed another tree fall over in the forest of your life. I am your father shaking his head at the thought of you. I am his words dissolving in your mind like footprints in a rainstorm. I am a long-legged martini. I am feeding olives to the bull inside you. I am decorating your labyrinth, tacking up snapshots of all the people who've gotten lost in your corridors.
From The Endarkenment by Jeffrey McDaniel. Copyright © 2008 by Jeffrey McDaniel. Used by permission of University of Pittsburg Press. All rights reserved.
From Breakfast on through all the day At home among my friends I stay, But every night I go abroad Afar into the land of Nod. All by myself I have to go, With none to tell me what to do-- All alone beside the streams And up the mountain-sides of dreams. The strangest things are there for me, Both things to eat and things to see, And many frightening sights abroad Till morning in the land of Nod. Try as I like to find the way, I never can get back by day, Nor can remember plain and clear The curious music that I hear.
This poem is in the public domain.