Rare Soul

It was crazies I wanted. Trees charge me. Remember, if I die, to plug me in a
tree. A  wingnut  elm  who  speaks a  truth. If I  saw my head off, chain me to
oak and charge me with murder.  I won’t even need a pillow. But I’ll gash my
head of  just  to  use  it  as a pillow.  Feel good, sleep good.  Even if their truth
made less sense than their beards,  I burned when they gave it to me  (always
on the subway,  passing into my hands a flame of roots).  The  apricot throws
itself  to  the ground,  because they let mountains exist.  But  wild  ones never
told me weather, because whether’s not a shade of truth. I relished the shade
of their beard,  withered breeze of their breath,  and I was glad when my best
friend  asked  me  to  spot  him  a  million  bucks  to  hide  from  the Feds in a
helicopter ;   sad  to  hear  my  childhood   declare  itself  the  biggest  Buddha
flatulating at the center of the universe,  then  helicopter of a roof; mad when
Nietzsche, terrified of my toilet, filled empties with urine and shaved himself
with  a  rotor   blade;  and  had  a roommate,  once, who got fired from a head
shop  for  excessive  Windexing  and  came  home  tossing  loaves  of bread he
rescued   from  a  dumpster.  Most  souls emit light.  But a rare  soul’s like the
gleaned worm angling for life;  it sucks up all the  dirt and churns it into food
until a birdbeak schisms it.  I  don’t  want  to grow like them when I  grow up,
no sir,  don’t  have  the  bells.  But  as  I  get  older,  drunker  &  more bearded,
maybe  the  sprigs  of  chin I  tug  between my fingers  will  turn  to wings and
spark,  whistle,  chirp.

Richard Prins