Your myth is one of libation.

Greedy, you eat green apples one by one
until your basket's empty.

(I hope they make you sick.)

Your mouth is a desert.
Open it, and sand and scorpions pour out.

On the window someone has written
DO NOT OPEN IN WINTER
in crooked letters. A warning bell.

Lions pace behind the closet wall.
The looking glass ripples with envy.

This is my panorama.

                                        I open the window and rise
above the trees, a Chagall, roses in hand.
Bows break. You're out of tune.

____

Over time truly gothic fairy tales and fantasies get diluted—or forgotten altogether—by a modern obsession with the cute and the sweet, and above all, the innocuous. It made me think about the lies we tell ourselves about who we are, a childlike insistence of our own righteousness or innocence.