this pig i

This pig I live with really
does hover over much of
what I do and say it’s in
the room I lie in daily when
I try to tell myself the truth
about deceit or what I read
or just my being a jerk and lazy
pissy it brings to mind the swine
within and out of sight it’s like
a shadow in its knowing how
dark at heart I am in part
it loves the muck I’m often in
the sty and stink of me and my
it’s like a household deity now
whose name is mine to give and take
back in vain it’s black and beautifully
sketched by Baskin in fact as though
he’d thought it a holy beast of sorts
a sacred cow or Zen bull
someone was having trouble herding
its hooves delicate as a devil’s
prance cloven above the heaven
and hell of my head its law written
in red biblical letters says
for me it seems specifically—
Pig, poet, thou shalt not eat.

hearsing

He was on his way in the dream
across a sea of sorts to Hearsing,
he remembered, knowing the place
didn’t exist as such but rose
up within him nonetheless
almost magically like a meniscus
over something he’d have heard
during the day after they
began rehearsing all those parts
that they’d play as each of their lives
more or less and in the end
was improvised very plausibly
though possibly too he was simply
hearing things once again
long before he’d come near them
simple things slipping through him
much like sleep or blood and breathing
in the way it all played out
in his dream of sailing to Hearsing.