Containment

The water rushes over it, hard and dark,
surging past the wave of my warning words.
Now it is too hot to handle, like the tiniest
of stars, halving itself endlessly
until the draw becomes so great
that everything begins to fall into it.

A yellow raft of butter floats on a
warm grid, its sturdy shape slowly
morphing. It lowers itself gently
into the grid, spreading across the
brown landscape. What I want
will not happen without something
pouring down, covering all of this.
And then, beyond that,
over the edges.

I stand up in the night sky,
looking down on her.
Stars touch her perimeter
in familiar places.
"As above, so below," she whispers.
My blue fingertips trace her face.
There is no rush now.
It is already out there.
It is already in here.

Sweet Crude and the Ox-Moron

They say the great man always wears a parachute. And there is a story told, a desert legend, if you will, that Moammar Qaddafi supposedly said he would become like the sun when he had passed through the eye of a camel. This event would "seal his beauty and enshrine his deathless actions." But many Libyans realized he was confusing himself with a camel and the phrase from the Bible and Quaran concerning a camel passing through the eye of a needle. The kingdom. But the people had already been led to believe that the kingdom already existed in the mirror reflection of the great Gadhafi's aviator sunglasses. Quickly the camel story circulated through the country and oddly with that there was a sudden and extensive outbreak of eye infections amongst the camels. The great moist orbs began to dry up. The people saw this as a sign that Khadaffi had lost favor with the sun. Quickly Kadafi pitched billowing rose colored tents on the sands and held state. Moammar smiled. His teeth were not his. He looked off in profile. The country was in his lenses for all to see:
" I love it when you misspell my name."
"What is the correct spelling el-Khadafy?"
"It does not matter. I am a ox-moron!"
"My name is all names."
Then he turned toward us, his safari suit peeping through his purple robes.
"Listen. My death will not be of my own doing. Therefore I will become a martyr. "
"Even if it is in an auto accident, Colonel?"
"Yes!"
"An illness, Al Gathafi".
"Yes!"
A snake bite, Muamer?"
"Of course!"
His fate sealed, the great one mounted his kneeling, crusty-eyed animal and swayed off into the vanishing horizon.