A Difficult Conversation

Happiness is a cradle.
No, it is a cage.
What are you,
a consensualsexual?
Yes. No. Marbles!
God, why can’t I be
a Monarch butterfly?
Mirthful, merry
in all weathers
as a booted drunk
bound for Mexico?
That’s the life!
Hopeless, a mind
all of paper
reads itself
over and over,
folded like newsprint.
The sky itself is a cradle.
I am a blotto bird.
This is a poem.
“Call me a taxi,”
said the tree,
“before I die.”
We meet in a cave.
The sky is a cage,
blue, moving.