Times I buy just one yellow hyacinth.
Times, too, he buys knives and tape, ropes and flash
lights, all to keep the mirror at bay, the snakes
that lurk from mocking us.
                      Crummy others
they are, and, like men, they must die!
                                   New bed-
fellows won't creep, moan, or shriek, make murder
in the ugly night, though their murdered

still fret them down the long way.
                              Hyacinths
they croon   dance in the ruins of gorgeous beds,
and though mother says she loves you, dear, the flash
you see in her photographed eyes means other
times.
    Shangri-la, boy, was a ruse.
                              That's why snakes

are wedged in his head?
                   Tee-hee.
                            Fury snakes
through his thoughts, pussyfoot soft, like murderers,
more than he can bear.
                   Dear Dog: my other
is a pimply faced fiend, and hyacinths
make him puke, and glee makes him puke, and flash
in either boys or girls sends him to bed
come night with boils on his thin white chest.
                                       Bed:
there we can dream of pollywogs and snakes
and Slurpies and gum, but nothing of flash
in a drunken man's eyes.
                   All these murders
drag us from our chosen selves.
                          Fool! Hyacinths
do not smile. Nor do they hide any others.

O yeah? Well how bout them knifes an tapes? How bout them ropes? Others
in them holler and pitch. They wreck are bed
too. Then he snatch up that hyacinth,
tastin as they eats it them heads of snakes
from them creatures they went off an murthered,
with pinwheelin mouths and dimes for eyes--flash!--
gurgley sounds in beggarly throats--flash!--

them frozen digits, them purple lips . . . .
                                   Others
never help us when we call.
                       His murders
squeeze him like a fat lady's fist. His bed
is rough with thistle and stench, a place for snakes
got by the failings of hyacinths.