Wheels

I am watching a movie about the humans
The story revolves around a nun raised by coyotes
All the rabbits have died and yet she remains innocent
She lifts her voice like a sack of letters written by illiterates
I am having a religious experience
It is the religion of the wolves

I am studying God and insect life at the same time
I am a skeleton in an anthropomorphology lab
I wear a white coat and pore over microscopes
I have no brain and therefore must rely on instinct
Nothing more than a feeling in my bones
The feeling you get when two or more wolves gather to make a wish

I am all wolves and the pretty people
On the screen encircle me with spears of conversation
Now I'm a dog lying in the kitchen, well that's better
You can see the wheels turning behind my eyes
I will stare at you until you know my hunger
My thirst, the fact that I have been reinvented

Tripping, You Call Your Girlfriend

Recounting the improbable
history of telephones
(not to mention the future
of the coins multiplying
in your pocket), you hold
the world's largest receiver
in your amazing hand. If
you can get past the cipher lock
barring passage into her mind,
the cops won't send out a squad
from the steel-and-glass world.
Somehow the complicated edges
of the beautiful quarter match
those of the slot, and now you're in
for a time, sorting out
her number from Planck's theorems.
You stand there for a hundred years
while the dial tone ululates
like an Italian siren . . .
Hello, you say.
Is this my voice?

-- Pete Lee