Your flame is lovely tonight -

Smokestack Head has fallen asleep on the couch in front of the TV.  A bowl of miniature human skulls, each the size of a golf ball, sits on his lap.  A blue candle burns out & the small room glows dark.  The ghosts don't bother Smokestack Head.

The face of time is twisting.  I'm in control of the dream: There's an old tree out behind the house that produces miniature human heads in lieu of fruit.  Half-rotten fallen heads are scattered amongst miniature human skulls beneath the tree's wide branches.

The Shoe-People started screaming at me.  I flailed wildly, spilling the bowl of miniature human skulls onto the floor.  One by one, they shattered & disintegrated.

Small clouds of bone-powder went unnoticed, almost.

Beneath the waxy mayonnaise jars
the croissants, the glittering apple butter
the peach cobbler, the lemon tarts
the lady fingers, the bobs of cilantro
the fat-striated bacon
the bits of turkey filigree
the bone yard underneath the pantry
I've buried the dead thing gently, gently
into a garbage bag.
For shit's sake,
I've even fed it cow's blood,
good wheat and multitudinous lentils,
though I know it remains heretically idle.
It's my yellow cadaver, my mangled tendril.
        And do you remember January?
That day I had given you a flying sacrifice
gliding as birds do with myopic certainty
into grinning glass? Not yet to the mail,
I've given you my bone-crack.
My foot, your twitching pedestal
a black-and-blue trophy rack.