maybe i won't flinch this time

when you bite down on me

to see if i am really there

or if i am just your imagination

playing tricks with your mind.

i give salmon, as santa this year

desirous of you to be vital.

but you may be a vegetarian now

i'll wait forever, my cricket

to be, maybe, your pacifier

to sing with you in the night

in the shrub.

to find wakefulness at dawn

in the new turn of the century

spaghetti

wrap-around film.

but grace will go on.

though oceans come violently

from shaken rock

giving in to the dizzier spin

even as war cries from the astrological

-gravity will tell us which way is up.

as sure as you or me

with hands wrapped, not bound