after words

Decide on the look first.
Will there be one color, or two,
and will they be warm or cold, plain
or bold?  Both or either or none?

Feed the snake prisms and small suns, one a week.
If there are rainbows (and there will be)
collect them by net and stuff them back in.
Pay no attention to his cleft tongue; once
it was whole and real, although
never made of rubies.

When you build his eyes,
and you find you’re without iris and lid,
go to the tin of buttons Elsie left,
find two glassy blacks, glassy as obsidian
minus the edge capable of dull cuts.
These will see as much as ever artifice did.
You’ll sense them prying your ribs apart
with sharp stares, trying to get at your heart.

Coil him, then, in a corner of dark.
Remember, he is your bright invention,
one to continue to build, one to unravel
at will. 

[after reading "Dismantling the Silence" by Charles Simic, Contemporary American Poetry, Fifth Edition]