sleeping in the front lawn coffin

this isn't a yard sale
but you can take whatever you can get.
the moon is cooking eggs 
on a cast iron skillet. 
someone is playing music
from a tin-man car radio &
the birds & growing two heads this spring.
what i know about sleep is that
it's made of taffeta. both stiff
& smooth. i refuse to assume
the customary dead-person position
& instead i put my hands behind my head
to recline. when was the last time
you took a good look at the world?
i try to do so only from 
particular vantage points.
here from my coffin i can pretend
i am looking back on a great story
written by many tired candles.
no matter how much we want it
& need it, there is no such thing
as a narrative. i had a friend
who died like a broken dish.
nothing is leading up to this.
a few neighbors stop 
not to pay respects but to ask
what it is i think i'm doing.
one whispers i should be careful.
actions like this can prompt 
the future. i do not talk because
i am dead & the dead do not talk
at least not on command. they slip notes
beneath bedroom doors that say,
"run away while you still have time." 
asking aloud i always say, "from what?"
no response. wisdom arrives 
in cannibal baskets. the words
eating each other until all sense
is nothing but wooden spoons 
& soup bones. a strong gust of wind
shuts the coffin door & briefly
i am nothing but a nest of fingers.
outside the world puts every tomorrow
on a windowsill for the sake
of clementines peeled & eaten too quickly.
in a sense i am burried.
who knows though what happens
on the other side of any given wall.
i crawk out & leave coffin.
a journey for another day.
it is both morning & still night.