as the owl augurs

I have an hour to read marcabru and fall in love
to study the medicines and put a rock in each corner of the house
and pray over it with pollen as my elder advised
to test my extraordinary knowledgeses
to briefly wonder whether I was actually under a spell
to write my poem about being a mongrel
I must love even the fox that impedes my path
n jettison my former ire n any gesture toward abstraction
n go to the dump finally w/ the disused bicycle tires and the broken antlers and the cracked stained glass of a ship that formerly I wdve harbored because I did not love myself
but the broken shelf
I want namore of it
the jangle-mongrel and the rose and the ndn cowboy that layall closeted
along w/ my availability to my own mind and the killings of our familyes queer and black and brown and ndn
slaughter at orlando symbol of our hermitude
massacre at aravaipa gashdla’á cho o’aa   big sycamore standing there
bear river  sand creek  tulsa  rosewood
n when I finally sussed them out
n laid the tequila in its proper trash
n attempted to corral the pony of my mind
they say the ohlone were here as if
there were no more ohlone
erected a fake shellmound called it shellmound avenue
my friends dont like that
my friends dont like that excrement
it’s not like youd give away the algorithm, my bf pointed out,
to the one yr tryin to put a spell on
marcabru uses the word ‘mestissa’ to describe the shepherdess his dickish narrator is poorly courting
which paden translates ‘half-breed’ and pound ‘low-born’ and snodgrass ‘lassie’ but I want to say mongrel, mestiza, mixedbreed
melissima most honeyed most songful
what catullus called his boyfriend’s eyes
honey the color my dead dog’s eyes the stomach of the bee
I’m going to gather pollen from the cattails in a week or two
to pray to the plant tell it I’m only taking what I need
use a coathanger to hook the ones far from shore
filter it thru chiffon four times
what is love
but a constellation of significances
lyke-like magic
los cavecs nos aüra  as the owl augurs
one gapes at a painting
the other waits for mahana