The time you screwed the door on backwards

and walked memory through the threshold

on a diamond leash that was something else.
A who's who of circus geeks strutted by

& whenever one winked at me with her pink eye

a certain stabbing motion rubblized the central
plain of my solar plexus. I lifted the four

corners of my pith off the linoleum cluster

& established a new equilibrium which not slowly
morphed into pungence nostalgic for funnel cakes.

Then there was our last freak show together.

We tried on happy but it was humid Ohio??
sweat evaporates like petroleum jelly

which is to say it doesn't. It persists, a reminder

you can run away from nothing but the details.
Frankly the freaks were disappointing.

One year the bizarro tent just disappeared

like the blurbs that float between us in the haze.
I'll never understand why we don't hear what we do

or not see the rod & cone assembly beneath our windows.

If the seagulls act dumb, call it strategy. If we do,
then some organs evolve more fully than others.

So in the end we are a species of specimens,

assortments of bent & grotesque features,
making everyone a geek in search of a tent.

I want to imagine your ears as Venus fly traps

snatching words, plump & puny, and slowly
digesting them until you know syntax so well

you diagram dreams. If you feed my pitcher plants

such beautiful things, you'll make me happy, sometimes.