Craziness, like an unopened forty visits at night
worrying, like a paranoid mother,
that her children may not be dreaming,
tucking the covers around their chins
whispering sweet nothings
about boot grinding and whippings.
So they rose with mouths frothing
the memory of the muddy road
fresh on their cheeks,
without really meaning to
the children exploded and populated
the galaxy with their pulsating bodies.
A milky way flowing away from mother’s tits
and splattering on the black
of the deathless universe
drip dropping farther and further
until the blackness did not look so black
but encrusted with mother’s milk
and peppered with children sliding and spitting
everyone slurping furiously before the curdle
too busy to notice that the white shower
was over.
Mother, after all, was far away by then.
Someone opened the bottle
and the white crust was stained
with sour brown,
glass shattered across the white mesa
with milky boulders and mountainous cliffs.
The children scattered as they puked yellow,
forgot the milky path in the brown cushion,
splattered marshes and trees while they
forgot the high places.
Then the first drip of dark red
cut a river between the children and
sprouted unknown pools and fell into
new tributaries.
A fog of heat dissipated over the
white and spotted brown
and fell again onto the faces
of the dreaming children with jagged
knives of brown glass in their hands
and so they stood until
one-by-one they dropped off into
dead sleep
to find refuge from their
splitting headaches, pounding temples
achy limbs.
