My niece is addicting
mice to cocaine.
The cause is science,
the university is Temple
so it’s almost holy.
Poor little buggers.
Their tickers get to ticking
and pretty soon they dream
that they are rats,
that they can fly,
that they are rats
with wings, pigeons
soaring over mouse and rat,
the god of mice,
of rats, of birds. Until morning
when they’ll believe
that they are dead.
Then the true god comes
in a cloud-like lab coat,
the resurrection and the life.
I used to dream
I was a mouse,
but I am only a flea
upon a mouse’s back.
But sometimes … sometimes
the blood’s so sweet
I feel I’m the uncle of light riding
bareback and holy through the temple.