Improv 1, Week 5

Barney
by Laura Kasischke

- I love you. You love me.

He is the true Zero in his cap & bells, in the terrible
lizards of his skin. I see him

crossing the tundra in snowshoes like a big
hug coming, lost

on Earth
in a body. Consider: if I become him

what kind of suffering? This
afflicted creature, dancing

for the hostile, costumed. Venus

loves him. He love me, has given

himself to the whole world without
mortification, given
himself to the landscape

of sap and snow and cloud, come

unto the world
and made it pregnant, singing
to the invisible family before him, swallowing

the sorrow of children—innocent, curious, extinct.
A narrow stream of tears runs right though him.

When the beloved
is in everyone, in the excited
imbecile, the timid

orgy of sleep, who
can help but think of Christ
with his sandals & lambs? Why

all of us? Why not just some? Oh
the emptiness of so much. The everlastingness. This
hug. Quivering, endured. A purple
balloon like our hearts, naked
and blown up

without flesh, wrinkles, fur. It loves
without an object of it, and how
we long to keep

the beast of it
stuffed down inside us

along with the little saints & fools
who sing pitiful songs in our chests.




Clifford

-I love Clifford the big red dog.

Imagine ten tons of red
darting over homes and terraces
before pawing your chest
with an asphalt, Volkswagen paw,
and sopping a mattress tongue
on your clean hair.
Imagine barking louder than god,
shingles and siding piled in the yard
beside buried cars
and two ton smelly masses
of digested whale and tree.
Imagine putting him down
after one less postman.
The chasing Panzer toy
firing guns and missiles
while Clifford nips the barrel
and tugs the roof off.
Imagine F22’s buzzing his back
chasing him out
into Mexico
where there’s no one
to harm.