The Bread We Eat in Dreams

So this guy walks into a dragon’s lair

and he says

why the long tale?

HAR HAR BUDDY

says the dragon

FUCK YOU.

The dragon’s a classic

the ‘57 Chevy of existential chthonic threats

take in those Christmas colors, those

impervious green scales, sticky candy-red firebreath,

comes standard with a heap of rubylust

goldhuddled treasure.

Go ahead.

Kick the tires, boy.

See how she rides.

Sit down, kid, says the dragon. Diamonds

roll off her back like dandruff.

Oh, you’d rather be called a paladin?

I’d rather be a unicorn.

Always thought that

was the better gig. Everyone thinks

you’re innocent. Everyone calls you

pure. And the girls aren’t afraid

they come right up with their little hands out

for you to sniff

like you’re a puppy

and they’re gonna take you home.

They let you put your head right

in their laps.

But nobody on this earth

ever got what they wanted. Now

I know what you came for. You want

my body. To hang it up on a nail

over your fireplace. Say to some milk-and-rosewater chica

who lays her head in your lap

look how much it takes

to make me feel like a man.

We’re in the dark now, you and me. This is primal

shit right here. Grendel, Smaug, St. George. You’ve been

called up. This is the big game. You don’t have

to make stupid puns. Flash your feathers

like your monkey bravado

can impress. I saw a T-Rex fight a comet

and lose. You’ve

got nothing I want.

Here’s something I bet you don’t know:

every time someone writes a story about a dragon

a real dragon dies.

Something about seeing

and being seen

something about mirrors

that old tune about how a photograph

can take your whole soul. At the end

of this poem

I’m going to go out like electricity

in an ice storm. I’ve made peace with it.

That last blockbuster took out a whole family

of Bhutan thunder dragons

living in Latvia

the fumes of their cleargas hoard

hanging on their beards like blue ghosts.

A dragon’s gotta get zen

with ephemerality.

You want to cut me up? Chickenscratch my leather

with butcher’s chalk:

cutlets, tenderloin, ribs for the company barbecue,

chuck, chops, brisket, roast.

I dig it, I do.

I want to eat everything, too.

When I look at the world

I see a table.

All those fancy houses, people with degrees, horses and whales,

bankers and Buddha statues

the Pope, astronauts, panda bears and yes, paladins

if you let me swallow you whole

I’ll call you whatever you want.

Look at it all: waitresses and ice caps and submarines down

at the bottom of the heavy lightless saltdark of the sea

Don’t they know they’d be safer

inside me?

I could be big for them

I could hold them all

My belly could be a city

where everyone was so loved

they wouldn’t need jobs. I could be

the hyperreal

post-scarcity dragonhearted singularity.

I could eat them

and feed them

and eat them

and feed them.

This is why I don’t get to be a unicorn.

Those ponies have clotted cream and Chanel No. 5 for blood

and they don’t burn up like comets

with love that tastes like starving to death.

And you, with your standup comedy knightliness,

covering Beowulf’s greatest hits on your tin kazoo,

you can’t begin to think through

what it takes to fill up a body like this.

It takes everything pretty

and everything true

and you stick yourself in a cave because

your want is bigger than you.

I just want to be

the size of a galaxy

so I can eat all the stars and gas giants

without them noticing

and getting upset.

Is that so bad?

Isn’t that

what love looks like?

Isn’t that

what you want, too?

I’ll make you a deal.

Come close up

stand on my emeraldheart, my sapphireself

the goldpile of my body

Close enough to smell

everything you’ll never be.

Don’t finish the poem. Not for nothing

is it a snake

that eats her tail

and means eternity. What’s a few verses worth

anyway? Everyone knows

poetry doesn’t sell. Don’t you ever feel

like you’re just

a story someone is telling

about someone like you?

I get that. I get you. You and me

we could fit

inside each other. It’s not nihilism

if there’s really no point to anything.

I have a secret

down in the deep of my dark.

All those other kids who wanted me

to call them paladins,

warriors, saints, whose swords had names,

whose bodies were perfect

as moonlight

they’ve set up a township near my liver

had babies with the maidens they didn’t save

invented electric lightbulbs

thought up new holidays.

You can have my body

just like you wanted.

Or you can keep on fighting dragons

writing dragons

fighting dragons

re-staging that same old Cretaceous deathmatch

you mammals

always win.

But hey, hush, come on.

Quit now.

You’ll never fix

that line.

I have a forgiveness in me

the size of eons

and if a dragon’s body is big enough

it just looks like the world.

Did you know

the earth used to have two moons?