The World is Burning, but Everyone Needs Sleep

Why bother to lift the cloud's galvanic veil?
Why remove the halo contact lenses
from my solid white eyes?

If so many crows like to watch the blurred
screen of my face, how can I be expected
to understand the truth of the obstinate
fire hydrant? The meaning of the space
between the prongs of the unplugged iron?

Maybe it's enough to bask in the shadows
of the thighs of the monumental icon,
to rescue dented souls with the tongs
of a sparkling imagination, to stretch out

on the floor of our carpeted basement,
counting the heads of our ceramic turtle collection
until the meditative gesture
becomes you, and you it.

So don't ask me to sleep on the other side
of the bottled-water bed.

Don't tell me to flick on the light and stop
drinking cocoa from the Van Gogh
museum's ear-shaped mug.

Yes, there may be a river of tomato-juice blood
surrounding our neoclassical-pueblo duplex condo,
but that doesn't mean the blinds should be open,
and everything allowed in.