*   *   *

The kitten was trained from day one
to be a lake of soft harmonics, to be

the rendered thing, a drawing, wealthy, a floral cud
of nerves seeping, the bureaucracy of spirit cuddled

in the smallest presidential cabinet, tucked away
by the kitchens of the welfare state, where dragons

with stone hips clown-car into Ovid's mouths
who sing like Orpheus if he could’ve written a single note,

and there’s Nefertiti, long-breasted in the neighboring squall,
covered with scratches, Reagan hurling the heart-shaped gastronomy

of food-stamps and children to-be-had. And if my arms
are popsicle sticks, let my poem be the joke, or pun the mouth

of indigo teeth blaring funtimes at the sun unlocks, the spanish beach
we pass away to once injustice jaws its melt on muses 1-thru-9,

turns their hair into a laser-print memorial on a strip of balsa,
the land where the taxidermied rheumatoid marsupial

will put on his glasses and his one sunflower shoe, read
the Wall Street Journal, be upset by the stock options

of this peculiar economic company, and stuff himself
with the leftover gnocchi, the windowed light like a meme.
           In short, alas, we are doubly taut and pulled
                       towards each lesson. We have not

           done nothing yet, really, and I mean that
           in the positive sense, the propaganda of every
           loving double-entendre, each bicycled double-negative.