Asterisk this, asterisk that.                   My deepest
thoughts slunk through my head, afraid.  Locust
trees shed petals across the street.    They lay
strewn like human teeth     over the raging
                yellow of the tensile yellow line.
I awoke like a lit M80:                    all fear,
bottomless orbits.                  While I slept,
helicopters ferried me through      peerless
darkness, a harness     hugging my pubis,
    a set of smiles for my squinting eyes;
high strangeness     for miles and miles.
They’d call me             snub-nosed bat,
                      they’d bend
my wings,               they’d             touch me
   and strike out                             my mind
with a walnut opener.            Sterling silver,
an antenna calls my brain blood around it,
a cerebral lighthouse, an obelisk,     a sun-
       dial towing an onerous line.