High

In the hall, scuffling; in the cat's mouth, a dove.

Oh startled exclamations! The bird is cooing soft

excitable alarms. You, plural, wake

at odds from fuzzy dreams and

thick-with-hashish mating, disentangling

the white flannel nightgown

from the legs that struggle

for firm ground; wrenched

by cries from the maw of bed

to the gaping mouth of the entry.

A dove! The cat is casual, smiling:

he will not be dispossessed.

You've had your fun of his fur

body, stuffed with marijuana,

brain, the target, blurring

to a small determined rage. He's earned

the things he gets between his jaws:

the crunchy bird bones, knowledge, and the white

wood-smooth body.

Look how I suffer, beckons now the bird.

I who have dared

investigate the air, who've found

clear weather at the rim.

I have hallucinated land

as crisp as light.

My flicker-yellow eye has unreeled sky:

now I am forced to watch

my homecoming, the draggle-tail

in hall, the sacrificial feast

where you sit down at table,

cracking the joints of the girl

in your teeth

and she gets her revenge

by going limp and refusing;

her impenetrable

feathers blurring your pleasure, tucked in

the subtle white grimace of bed.

Hurried into a box, the dove,

back of the stove, pants

and recovers. Blood on her feathers

and soot like a slick on them, glassy

and evil. A chuck of her head

and the quick breathing

slackens: her breast heaves with

gossip; the eye shuts,

reliving. You are sickened

in retrospect, feeling again

the curved bird in the mouth,

the blood hardened like rind

and the terror that tore through

your feigned-passion fucking

and woke you from sex

like the shriek of a child.

From where did it come? The world flounders

in water; the household submerges in sleep.

The bird nests by your side,

a small feathery hump.

In the cave of the nightgown

perhaps you will grope for

each other's warm parts again.

What else, my potheads,

high, indefatigable,

would you be doing

with a dove in your place?