you're in my heart where my blood's supposed to be.

[mercywaits.livejournal.com]

Hi! I don’t care about your actual uncle
in his skull and sweet snuff,
the rat-eyed rat in his root cellar
and real spots in his beeches,
red spruces, and papery birches.
I, too, could love his ethnic ink.

Where does your imagination make love
with the world that’s always anyway you?
When you abandon the restoration of the real,
wrap cords around the necks of power tools,
where does your imagination rain,
over Uncle Anton’s miter box?

O sad times washed in acid!
You can’t help but live inside your life,
Even when you step outside
in stockings oily with lanolin
of the sheep that bore them,
even when you step outside in horror.

-- "A Celibate Imagination", Kathleen Halme