poem for you

You are a forest of trees stripped of their leaves

in the summer heat,

a long stretch of beach without sand,

a flock of birds with no wires to rest on

I think of the Dali image

with the clocks melting

and you are that landscape in black and white.

You are a wheat field resting next to a rusty tractor.

I hope that it rains when you want it to be sunny

and that you go somewhere the sun always shines,

even when you are trying to sleep.

You are the flower who butterflies have abandoned,

who hummingbirds will not sip from,

who bees will not pause to drop their dung.

You are a temple built for a non-god

and goddamn you to be a neighbor of Sisyphus,

for the length of eternity plus a million years.

You are a cacophony of pans in an abandoned luncheonette

in an empty field next to a junkyard with no dog.

You evil spirit, curse you as many feathers

as there are in pillow factory.

May you nap at the bottom of the Mariana Trench

and always be thirsty.

May you disappear like the witch

at the end of a classic movie,

like vapors in the road ahead of you

that vanish when you come closer,

like the ashes in a grill long after

the embers have extinguished themselves.

You are a furnace that fails

to give off heat in the winter and

the only river turned to ice

with a stranded town down below.