Elephant time/ elephantine

 

Doing my best in a shortfall, to be gone in a can of

Cortisol and hair spray

In tooth decay in nominal equities

And innumerable beauties

And telegraphic controversies of hook liners

That shape the turtle dove into some angelic being

And give her a golden egg imbibed with meaning

And when in actualness the forecast looked grim

Because high above antennae rooftops swam the peregrine

 

And even if these wolves are called the sea, and gems are not cut by diamond dromedary

Then the lump she was concealing in her peacock pouch

Was gemlike glistening

Heraldic and fizzling to be close to social exclusion 

And far from some happy place

To see in isolation solace

And yet to laugh in loneliness’s face

If that were the attainable state

I shouldn't care where the pendulum swings

And if I am a free bear

Then this forest of time

Should not be thickets of problems,

I should see the wood for the trees,

But slowly I see the hunter stalking me

Through the long grass

With his elephant in his spy glass

The elephant in the room

No one is talking about him

Just the way he likes it

He likes to be left alone

An elephant is always solitary when he's far from home

Though this doesn't mean he's made of stone

It just means he's packed his trunk is on his way

To where I could not say,

To what time or place

can you find him pining for the forest again

For the memory of ivory is like the scent of burning wood

And bonfires of his vanities,

And tusks of really doing good

And ears of imperfection for to listen

To malapropisms and feet like starved mosquitoes

Spread-eagled and flattened without blood

Pachyderm

The thermal tongue that licks the peanuts

And the snake bark skin

Like a tree trunk, gnarled and thick, as the crusts of earth

On which his feet are treading.