Desert Sandcastles

There's dead skin on my feet from my walks
in the dunes that I'm peeling off and eating fleck
by fleck, one cell at a time. This
calloused surface is you, potholes of rotting
flesh and air pockets stripped and replaced
with fresh creases and lines that will become
rotting flesh and air pockets. Old layers
replaced by the usual victims, you'll be
scraped away tomorrow, and I go about my business.

Somewhere outside a song is playing, gramophonic
static skipping every seven beats:
a hiccup there as it, stumbling, dances
hiccup and then I try to match
it hiccup--I'm standing at the window,
hiccup-lilting, hiccup-jilting, shaking off
these peeling toes along the creaking wooden floor.
A sparrow joins me hiccup-skipping, balanced
on my windowsill as rumbling, Pork Pie Mingus
drifts down the hill among some spindly
dying leaves. And we watch the moon,
the bird for Prez and me for you
as the sparrow whistles the tune.

Tomorrow's floorboards will be fixed,
tonight's disposed posthumous, auburn
flecked and hung to dry. Come
morning I'll buy lotion and a new door
handle or maybe just a new door
or better socks. I am done walking
barefoot through desert sandcastles.