[FOsen]

Tonight, when I am nearly to cloud nine,
I dream a picture-word and see that 'bed'
resembles what it means: the b, whose line
is like a headboard by a drowsing head;

the sheet and mattress that transect the e;
and feet against d bedpost—what’s the word
for this? A machicote? A soldanry?
Lie still! Pretend those thoughts have not occurred . . .

Just be the bed, the thing, that word, the . . . hell.
Opisthognathous? Mazard? Pseudoblepsis?
Pantopragmatic, frammis, casquatel,
rhabdosophy, kememe, omphaloskepsis?

Perth Amboy, tergiversator or wyke?
By five, with half the dictionary read
I know it’s none of those, so—feeling like
an ideogram—I send myself to bed.

Frank