and if you want Lascaux vandalized,
oh, I’ll do it.
Let an antlered thing flush
at the sight of us. Let a herd of them
stare a little longer. A mouth is a tool.
It’s a magnet. It’s a garden. Now
Montignac wants our heads on spikes.
I’ll go down for it if you follow me.
We’ll submit to the court our notes towards
a perfect cosmology, a map of would that I’s
and yes I would’s. The way that mammals
make their own graves, all the time, and never stop
keeping room for another.
Do me a favor and build me an empire. Call it
a delicate thing. Daylight covers fungi, lichen, rot
of the Magdalenian. But in this room, it’s fox skins
and socks, frayed away, already gone. Never mind.
Do you want to rob the Guggenheim with me?
If we get caught, we go down together.
I would call that an empire, too, a gruesome
endeavor. Call me a gruesome endeavor. Call me
whatever you like, you tyrant, you trouble me.
Let me pick the berries off the branch today,
to be the one to feed you. I want to see your face, stained,
with juice, with cave paintings.