In the recurring caveman
Dream I wear my meat vest
And I love you, the whites
Of our eyes gleaming
Like cleanly picked bones as we sit
Beside our fire, the one that
Allows us to think
Outside predation and weather
And I wonder
If I would have the time
To love you otherwise, a thought that
Unsteadies me horribly, like
Yesterday, in the hands
Of the pear-shaped Russian
Hairdresser, the way
She sylphlike peered
At me in the silent glass
Of the mirror, her
Clicking scissors slipping
Behind my ear and I wanted
To sleep in her terrible
Black pupils, this is what hair cuts
Mean to me, I am as a beast
Dressed in the guise of a boy, I wish
For a small, ardent thing
And am throttled by
The lung-crushing collapse
Of my own desire as it comes
Into being, which is
Why I prefer the hallucinations
Of Neanderthal life, days
Spent inching
Boulders from the ridge
Where below a pitching pack
Of mastadons tread trumpeting and nights
Where my dream
Within my dream is of riding
The mountainous
Eromotherium, a creature
Whose yawning bellow fills
Forests where birds once ruled
The earth, but we, luckily
Have no such ambition, plastic
Bags drift in the bare
Arms of trees we know
Not the names of, a sunlit
Satellite dish dithers
Next to a still, iron weather vane
And we sleep in an old bed, our fire
Crumbling down to embers, your hand
Probing for morsels in my stiff
Knotted hair, I remove
My meat vest and I love
You, our bulbous
Noses flickering in the ash-flecked night.
"There Will Be a Very Meaningful Picture Here" from American Music by Chris Martin. Copyright © 2007 by Chris Martin. Published by Copper Canyon Press.
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