Give Me Back My Rags

Just pop into my head

1

Give me back my rags

My raglets of pure dream

Of silken smiles

Striped premonition

And my lace-like sinews

My raglets of polka-dot hope

Of filigreed lust

Calico glances

And the skin off my face

Give me back my rags

I’m asking you nicely

Listen you freak

Off with your white kerchief

Don’t we know each other

Together from childhood

Lapping at the same bowl

Snoozing in the same bed

With you evil-eyed knife

Walking this strange world

With you snake in the shirt

Listen double-crosser

Off with your white kerchief

Why lie to each other

I won’t carry you piggyback

I won’t take you where you tell me

Even if I were shod in gold

Even if I were harnessed to three wheels

On the cart of the wind

Even if I were bridled to a rainbow

Don’t try to grease my palm

I won’t even with my feet in my pocket

Threaded through a needle tied into a knot

Or whittled into a simple stick

Don’t try to scare me

I won’t even roasted or overroasted

Raw or salted

Not even in a dream

Don’t go on kidding yourself

It doesn’t work I won’t

Get out of my walled-in infinity

The dancing ring of stars around my heart

Out of my morsel of sunlight

The rollicking sea of my blood

My flow my ebb

Out of my marooned silence

Get out I said get out

Out of my living pit

The bare father-tree within me

Get out how long do I have to shout

Out of my head bursting into pieces

Out out just get out

You get kewpie doll notions

I bathe them in my blood

Dress them in the rags of my skin

Make swings out of my hair for them

Toy carts from my vertebrae

Gliders from my eyebrows

I make them butterflies from my smiles

Wild beasts from my teeth

To hunt to kill time

What kind of game is this anyway

Damn your root blood and crown

And everything else in your life

Every dried up image in your brain

Every shifty eye burning on your fingertips

And every step you take

May you sink into three kettles of grumpy water

Into three stoves of omen-fire

Into three pits without name or milk

An icy breath against your throat

The pebble beneath your left tit

And the bird-razor in that pebble

Swoop the blackest of blackbirds to the lair of nothing

To the hungry scissors of beginnings

To the womb of heaven I know so well

Damn your seed sap and glitter

Darkness and dot at my life’s end

And everything else in the world too

What happened to my raglets

You won’t give them back you won’t

I’ll scorch your eyebrows

You won’t be invisible forever

I’ll mix day and night in your skull

You’ll come beating your head on my back door yet

I’ll pare your screeching fingernails

You won’t chalk hopscotch through my brain anymore

I’ll hound the fog out of your bones

Slurp the hemlock off your tongue

You’ll see what I’ll do

So you want us to love each other

You can make me out of ashes

The trash of my belly laughs

Out of what’s left of my boredom

You can doll-face

You can grab me by the hair of my short memory

Hug my night in its empty shirt

Kiss and kiss my echo

And you don’t even know how to love

Run freak

Our footprints bite one another

In the dust behind us

We’re not meant for each other

I see through your iciness

Pace your extremities

This is not much of a game

Why did we ever mix our rags

Hand them over what do you want with them

They are just fading on your shoulders

Hand them over scram into your nowhere

Run freak from a freak

Don’t you have eyes

There’s a freak here too

May your tongue blacken

Your noon your hope

Everything black only my chill white

My wolf at your throat

May the storm be your bed

My fear your pillow

Wide the meadow of your sleeplessness

May your every morsel be fiery

Your teeth of wax

Come on glutton chew all you want

Dumb your wind your water your flowers

Everything tongue-tied

Only my grinding teeth still loud

My hawk at your throat

One less horror for your mother

I wiped your face off my face

Tore your shadow off my shadow

Levelled the hills within you

Crumpled your plains into hills

Made your seasons quarrel

Kicked the earth’s corners from you

Tied the path of my life around you

My overgrown my impossible path

Now just try to meet me

Enough of your sweet-talking immortelles

Of your candied trifles

I don’t want to hear to know

Enough enough of everything

I’ll say my final enough

Stuff my mouth with earth

Grind my teeth

I’ll shut up skull-lapper

Shut up once and for all

I’ll stand just as I am

Without root branch or crown

I’ll lean on myself

On my own bumps

I’ll be the stake driven into you

Into you party-pooper

Into you muddle-head

That’s all I can do

May you never come back

Don’t fool with me freak

You hid a knife under your scarf

Stepped over the line tripped me up

You spoiled the game

You wanted my heavens to turn over

The sun to break my head

My rags to be scattered

Never fool with another freak

just give back my rags

And I’ll give back yours