It’s my own ghost I can’t get away from.
Living on the high wire, the cries of peacocks
mold your babies out of the lichens
I sleep cradled in, candles lobbing gardens

into my dreams. I tamp a cigarette out
and ripples plume like the mooncalf’s
nipples, fat as apples,
waiting for teeth. Your night sirens like to ride

etiquette and property, muscles stung and greening
bulbs break pendulous earth, mocking hours.
All night long. That morning, the lowest octaves
came blushing through your gardens, shelling milk

from pods where clocks seed the bedroom, upchucking
stars. Think of my phenomenology
as menagerie, bestial catastrophe,
lets you ferment and pass away.