I woke up on a floating bed in a dripping cave meant for mother.
Where a circle can mean a shape or other things

like the elephant in my bed,
next to which I am a glowing basketball.

I wanted to wake the elephant to ask if today was yesterday yet and
because its synaptic signals became too loud for me to sleep.

But there was a hurricane in his breast and snow in my esophagus. The
stench of skin under fingernails was nauseating.

Nighttime is the muddy path from today to the next today. A trudge
which dirties my words so the elephant can't hear me

when I say that I long to conquer the world
or at least to see my mother.

Tonight, and in the space between one now and the next, I am the
only person who knows that natural disasters do exist

and that they can't drown out the sound of the transmitter
which is so poorly hidden underneath your rib cage.

I am impatient to inhale the elephant in my bed and the roar
of jet engines through the nose of tomorrow, but

until today is just yesterday's umbilical ache,
I pour an ocean into my ears.

Not to drown in, but to drown out
the smell of the space of tonight.