Elephants

Elephants

When I was small, there were lots of elephants.

They'd walk in rows with sequined showgirls

straddling ornate furniture on their backs --

a woman with purple feathers for a hat

strung up by her teeth on a silver wire,

miles in the sky and dangling like a shark.

Back then you could laugh at elephants 

or women hanging up like trophies.

I could rip off my clothes in the vegetable section--

take a shit right in my pants.  What changed 

in the years to come was an ever diminishing

circle of what was acceptable -- like a noose.

Some days I walk into the office and as soon as my mouth

drops open, a purple accordion

leaps from my lips and honks wildly around the room.

I must restrain it by clubbing it to death with a chair.

Or when you're wearing a tie and a big yellow giraffe

sticks its nobbly head from your left breast pocket.

It bobs with polka dots on its long neck, staring

blankly into the face of Doctor-Someone-Or-Other;

its humid nostrils fogging the good doctor's glasses. 

What if eels or leopard geckos burst from his eyes

arranged themselves in rows, to dance the can-can, 

on the parade ground at your feet.