Except on Leap Years

Craft me a riverraft for an aquatic adventure where snakes infest the rapids and rabbits roam the shoreline, all waiting for the eagle to swoop down and snatch away all their sins with talons sharp as deep space where dead souls reside in icy slumber waiting for some sun to come and thaw frozen dreams like TV dinners or maybe chicken-alfredo Hot Pockets that taste great but leave a lingering aftertaste of guilt like some lurking fear of silent windmills or orange globes of ball lightening streaking down high tension wires on the side of some deserted prairie highway that hasn’t seen traffic in a long, long time, save a lonely mail truck that carries letters to the dead every other Tuesday except on leap years or when it rains red war on the innocent grass that has been taken hostage by the guilty dirt which is undermined by millions of blue ants who dig and dig until there are so many tunnels that the ground collapses under even the softest footfalls of the fox that scampers in search of Leonard Nemoy’s decomposing corpse which is buried around here somewhere under heaps of earth and white wooden crosses that speak of the yellow human condition that brought him here in the first place, the third place on the podium is left empty out of either respect or maybe unbridled enthusiasm that the pretty girl seen in passing will somehow find her way to the vacant pedestal and receive the glory usually reserved for movie premiers and sales at The Gap where she buys most of the black underwear everyone imagines she wears when she dances alone in front of a mirror that only reflects ideas and only bad ones at that, like making wings out of wax and flying into the sun, or flying into the sun without wax or wings, just the grey remains of Paul McCartney and his troupe of naked actresses down on all fours crawling through pleasure and shame and general dislike for the kid in the back swallowing swords and thinking everything is perfect the first time around before they begin to go around the circle saying every one’s name at least seven times and one of them says “I just can’t wait to die” and another one adds “I just want to die slowly so I can really feel it and not miss anything” while they drink tea and dance toothpicks across their plum lips which have felt their share of rotten apples or overripe bananas if that is what keeps distracting them from scratching green eyelids and digging for gold, silver, or any other precious metal, perhaps even cobalt or uranium, any radioactive material is a welcome distraction from these other, less interesting, non-radioactive materials that are used as makeshift drugs to subdue those people who do not understand the simplicity of social interaction underwater or in any other low-oxygen environment, like space.