Basket case, string me together
like a line of pearls
You asked me to be mad
but just for about five minutes:
long enough to write a poem
and then catch the elevator.
Long enough to catch a train
long enough to hail a cab
long enough to watch the storm
from the 15th floor.
As if the death masks on the walls could talk
a tiny beetle is crawling out of the eye socket of the skull
The ska checkerboard takes a King
wicked into the dawn
she asks again and again
for a light
puffffffing slowly on a cigarette
avoiding life.
Avoiding life is not the same as suicide
to jump in front of a train
is not heroic but there's more action there
than inside of her
as she dances with delight
rings a tiny bell
I hear an echo of this chance at freedom
boredom and ennui are her past times
I picture her with opium
on a Friday night.
There is no sense in firing him, it's been a long distance relationship
between the Sun and the Moon for many years now, anyways.
No sense in asking the Janitor for cash.
The film in the camera and the film on that old dusty piano
have all become the same thing.
It's his attempt to go back in time
and call the music back to life.
In those old bars, the Grey Ghost played
shapeshifter each key whether black or white
and howled into some bitter majesty in the pitch black night.
Prostitutes and war veterans with prosthetic legs hobbled together
as rats scurried between the fences and the cans
the sharp edges of aluminum
and the dirty nylon stockings
wrapped up into balls on wash day
and the bright white linens slapping the sky
on the clotheslines
between the tenement houses
1939.
Fantastic story, really had me going there.
Testify to my magic eye
I got the apple pie and the war bride
I got the taste test
and the steel vest
I got the insect and the butterfly
Genuflect to my intellect
I got the right suspect
I am lost in pain
up to my neck
the sea shatters me
underneath my glass feet
sandy toes
drowning
Capture my rapture
I am done speeding by
I am slow train coming
I am what you can't deny
I am found in the hallway
the mission bells
and monks walking
I am dust on a mirror
car salesman
fast talking
I am ripe like a cherry
from the long lost tree
I am lost in the seance
I am calling me.
I often walk under this particular overpass
of steel beams where the train rides above
and there's a mural and shadows and pigeons
so I know the stickers and the graffiti well
I had seen the black marker
that said FREE GAZA
and weeks later I saw
where someone wrote it
FROM HAMAS
This particular morning
I saw a Streets and Sanitation worker
with a power wash water sprayer
spraying water at such a high force
that the graffiti and stickers were
going to be removed
the spray from the water gun
dispersed into the air
making a rainbow
in the sunlight
on a Monday morning
Removal by force
is ironic here
Isn't there a better way
like writing in--
FREE GAZA
FROM HAMAS
AND THEN FROM PAIN
--or something.
The rainbow told a story
I wanted to capture it in this poem
and not on my phone.
As I write I don't know
who the rainbow was for.
There's some kid named Liam who wore a shirt,
and it said there are only two genders
and it's this serious issue
and I'm asked to #standwithLiam.
Language is real.
You can't teach someone that the sky is blue--
and then talk about how actually, when it's night, it's black
and expect them not to be confused.
The manic stamp of my poetry will not go unnoticed.
It started with the ego and then it turned into empathy.
I saw the photo of the children crying, their eyes wild with confusion.
I repeat: their eyes wild with confusion.
Holding, each other and bloody small arms.
What was my problem again?
Do you really think I care if your art organization gets funding?
Do you think I care about your branding racket on NPR?
No, I do not.
I care about the moon, spinning in space.
Half dreaming and stupid as it hangs in the air.
I had a thought like a basketball, suspended in time.
The panthers that Delacroix drew still haunt my mind.
The river of the Old West is spinning too
through the canyon of my heart
in a late night text LOL was I really to be the angry bride
bent like a fender on an old Ford
crying and moaning with curlers in my hair
and a frying pan to boot
with leather pants and a sword
trying to take back your heart?
OH, hardly.
Again, the moon in me shifts.
Was the well-timed turd that Amber Heard laid
did she know that that moment would be her undoing.
Could she have possibly known.
I have a friend who sends me pictures
of Marvel Comics, people larger than life
but I am small
I am a mouse in the wall.
I want to be big, but I am small.
A tiny in utero child
Cloaked in sour milk and winging it
on stage
kissing the lion
and coming up to draw breath.
Her earrings fly through the space from the moon to the landing on Jupiter
when I turned and missed the call I found a fallen angel shattered in the mirror
Did I ache to ask her a question? Echoing the shadows against the muddy walls of the well
I had a cave inside my heart and a small temporary tattoo of a bicycle in my hand.
I had tea with my grandmother, two bags worth, and wondered what my Dad would think
if he saw me smoking with hoodlums. I longed to taste the cool night air on the back of a Camel
and walk through the pinhole of Africa into the Blues-soaked rags of the Sahara
wake up in Egypt with eyelashes longer than power lines, full of soot and chalk and nail polish
in the realm of a frozen tundra, where Russia meets the West.
The old man with the wide nose covered in hard red warts oversized and awkward
blind with thick rimmed glasses yet talking quietly shuffling while pushing an empty wheelchair
there's suddenly water all over the floor at Jewel
right by the flower section
I stand in line at the bank teller, artfully placing a cup of delicate, delicious, expensive
espresso in my hoodie pocket
daring myself to place it, with the lid, in my pocket, upright
while I do my transaction
As I wait in line
the man brushes me
The man with the wide nose covered in hard red warts oversized and awkward
blind with thick rimmed glasses yet talking quietly shuffling while pushing an empty wheelchair
and I look and see he has oranges under his chair
a bag of oranges surely
and I step aside so he can get by
I catch myself acting like he is a leper
but I steady myself as I hold no ill will
I just didn't want to be touched by a passerby
and of course I then see
that the oranges are not oranges
they are orange roses, and a black plastic container full of three bouquets of orange roses
is being dragged under his wheelchair as he pushes it along
rather pitifully at this point, slowly
I look back at the floral section and it all makes sense
He didn't see that he had tipped over the black plastic vase of bouquets
and that is why there is water all over the floor
and why he's moving slowly
as he pushes his wheelchair along
with the orange booty underneath
Against my better judgement I stop to help
He had moved aside and I say sir, you have something caught under your chair
and I bend down to help
the saint that I am, and awkwardly pull out the flower tub
and in the process I spilled my delicate, delicious, expensive espresso
in the cute cup with the plastic top
and I go back to the floral section, with the orange roses and place them there
Look at the checks I was going to desposit
Important money, rent money
and I see the coffee stain spreading on the biggest check.
I sigh and deposit the checks.
The teller takes them despite the coffee.
God bless him.
I go outside and I see some poor sap, a woman, not unlike me,
has taken it upon herself to escort the man to Clark Street
but they are at the gates of the store
standing in the hot sun
on the wide black asphalt parking lot
kind of like the middle of nowhere
the middle of time
and he's wasting her time
she's trying to be patient and kind
asking if he needs to get to Clark Street
but he doesn't really need to be anywhere
and she probably does
and I feel sorry for her
because in her I see myself.
Praise the truth hold it up like Simba but keep in mind it might be deep in your heart unable to be touched by human hands