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Beneath Your Parents’ Mattress

BENEATH your parents’ mattress is a stairwell leading downward.
That bed is like a door on which your parents knocked to summon you.

Moles are a kind of meteor.  Their careers are knots in the earth.
Because the earth is a ball, the way out of the maze is straight up.

Punishing young woman, fuelled by a river of burning stones,
Put up your black snake whip; set aside your thorny iron ball on a stick.

If I do not solve, within the next few hours, the eternal, tormenting mystery of love,
Then let herds of city buses, packed with foreigners, drive over my hollow corpse.

Angels in the bath!  But they’re not really angels; they’re merely girls.
And that water is hardly water: it is the blood in your own ears.

And everything from passion’s aphelion to integral calculus is telling you to go.
But always you find the hinge of the door on everwhich side you pull . . .

Madrid has a black charm-bangle.  When he’s angry, he rubs the black charm-bangle.
Right now, his fingers are white from how hard he’s rubbing the black charm-bangle.