COME TO ME

the future comes to me
with a horrifying screech
then it comes to me softly
like a weeping cloud
and it comes to me like
a fish, glass-eyed, flopping
and it comes to me erotically
meanly & sharp
it comes to me cashed out rolling
electronically

in my future life I was
a cowboy, killed
in a bar fight

a flamingo in the snow

* credit: from The Loving Detail of the Living & the Dead, Coffee House Press, 2013.