Barking Dogs

Near midnight my arms elongate
three blocks down the street
so my hands can squeeze their larynxes
like tropical fruit. Then shall the rest of me
leap fence after chain-link fence
to slip witches’ brew into their kibble.
Other poets drown them out with Mozart
or double-paned glass, while to sleep I whisper
sweet nothings in their silky ears.

Juggling

He does it to keep the world moving.
If he stopped, who knows if earth
would cease its rotation, if electrons
would slow, life and physics ending.

For now he puts aside pins and rings
and chooses red balls that snug his palm.
One by one up they go, circling
into an ellipse that blurs

hand to hand, air to air,
pirouetting on a fingertip,
diverted under his leg,
transferred left to right

as if little wings sprouted from their rubber sides
as if they were planets as obedient as Mercury
and as far away as Pluto,
as if the universe depended on how