Many of the times I am being strangled,
I pull my elbows firmly into my chest for even greater stability,

and imagine myself skiing, representing an unspecified
Scandanavian country in the 1972 Winter Olympics,

but there is only the forest, and in this jungle
there is nothing but a piece of string waiting inside a tree to be pulled out,

my mother pulling her head back and forth
across the sky with the back of my hand,

a few coins
stacked at the precipice.

I remember: there was a woman
feeling my heart loudly pound against my chest;

there was a man – a man, definitely not a reindeer
dressed as a man – crawling up a chain-link fence.

My hands do walk sometimes
body up in the dark.

It feels very comfortable and does not cause
my chest to shake out of control.

My feet do reach sometimes
up for the ceiling

as I work to perfect my long straight windowpane
used with black holes for eyes.

I think of shivering,
biting, extracting

the tentacles from
the showerhead,

very heavy footsteps
pressed into coins

coming from tiny feet with dimples strong enough
to power pound profiles of presidents.

What?
Can I tell you?

Sometimes on the hum side of the track
the wool over the dead man are your eyes.