The Bread We Eat in Dreams

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