we are angels
with cathedrals,
prophets, and poems
to prove it  

other species  
are not endowed
with such gifts:

the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel
the pyramids, loosing
the bounds of earth
to walk on a moon...
psychoanalysis
the atomic bomb
Anthrax, dioxin
and gunfire
gunfire  

we are maggots
on rotting fruit, sated now
looking for a place to hop off,
to escape before the fruit falls fast  
to the ground

before the oceans rise
and the skies fill with ash
surely we can fly away

but we are wingless
angels, killer angels  
killer angels

be hovering above
your body after death, a
floating purgatory

which does not desist
when they cover you with dirt, or
make quick cremains of you

you get to hear what others
say when you're gone, first scripted
testimonials, of your laudatory life

later, when the food is being crammed
in overloaded fridges, and the ties and tongues
are loosened, other words emerge:

"he was never good to his wife; you know
he pulled the plug on his father, but wouldn't
let them do the same with him"

"he didn't seem to pass peacefully, all
that labored breathing -- perhaps he was
missing his boy he hadn't seen in years"

"maybe he felt he didn't earn his way
to salvation, or even an end to suffering
of this life of flesh and bone"

and you know not if this is heaven or hell
this place you are doomed to dwell, though you
wish you could now be deaf to these words

an endless biography composed by
all your regrets and transgressions, a book
of your life you would choose to rewrite

but no one, you lament, has that privilege...

gold, round
it has felt a thousand hands
in sixty years

tomorrow it will be
replaced, the dead door
along with it

the old brass globe
knows nothing of gentrification;
its desecration of memory:

the carpenter who bore its hole
the first child to turn the **** to play;
the last man to yank it in anger

when he felt the bowels of defeat,
the bane of bankruptcy--the effluent epiphany
of eviction

how many tales began with
the spinning of the circle, the opening
of the door, letting in the light

tomorrow, and tomorrow, the door,
the handle, will rest in the landfill, the
graveyard of myriad doorknobs

all with their own stories of auspicious
beginnings, mysterious twists and turns--
plots thickened by the hands of time

sleep deprived five dozen hours  
I am on a desert highway, without a nickel
my thumb begging for a ride which wouldn’t come
until dawn    

but I don’t know all that dark is ahead;
I only know the night is moonless, the cedars
the pinyons on the far mesas are moving like mournful buffalo,
long gone except in my waking dream  

on the road two eyes are all I see
green, sparkling as prisms of light in all that black,  
electrified ***** of mushy matter, glowing in sockets
in a canine skull    

I fear strange dogs
and other fanged beasts--I pray to a god
I do not know is there, imploring empty space
and dark matter for salvation    

it comes when the lights of a diesel  
birth, rear, and shrink the shadow of me  
and allow my vexed eyes to see, an asphalt stream
with nary a scary creature but I

when I returned, things had changed  
while the wild white dogs still gnawed
at their prostrate prey, by the tracks we all cross,
they were larger, and raised their mongrel heads
only at the scent of me  
for I now could walk so I would not be seen  
or heard by their blue black tongues  
my children’s children were not there    
perhaps wandering in another's field
of dreams, with another’s eyes,
perchance another’s thumping heart  
all the homes were old, and smelled of the past, yet
the young ones inside were who I hoped they would be  
filled with the bright eyed promise of tomorrow  
though I tried to know them, they only smiled,  
spoke a language I could not understand,  
and left each morn without me, wandering
with the beggars and beasts, on trails I could not see  
the sun shone through every door  
sending shafts of light at my invisible feet  
without warming them or giving them
safe passage among the same old dogs
I longed to know, but who never saw me
again

you
were following the leader
trusting him,
hardy figure of man
in a colorless world
with trees dead to the eye
thanatos thickets thick with quiet
that thrashed and slashed you
along the way
but you followed, sometimes
in sacramental silence,
other times crying out in penitent pain
did he not hear you
as he juggernauted through
those gnarled dead wooded webs
like he was steel?
and man of steel
is what you called him
when you grew to know him
was he too not flesh and bones
could he not hear your cries?
even deaf, could he not see
your man-child skin being bloodied
in this land of thorns?
how long could he keep marching
expecting you to keep up
like some soldier on an unholy quest
rather than his lost child
who could find no path
through this wretched plain of pain?
you could see only his back
as you ran to keep up
you could not have known,
though you are his legacy,
he has no face to bear scars
and when will you,
the innocent, discover
steel has no soul?

I dreamed
of your funeral
someone told me
to remove my hat,
in such scared space
with all those amputated flowers,
***** pipe moans, and
necromancing neckties

you spoke; you assured me
I did not have to expose
my naked head, or any other secrets
for you knew them all, as did those
among whom you now "walked"

others yet stared at me
with chastising eyes
admonishing me to uncover my head
for I was still among them they said…

they could not hear you or feel your breath
making the hairs stand on the back of my neck,
if they could, they would have let me be

they would have known
you did not demand truth
it was all around you, and even stripped of my hat
and forced to endure the sun's glaring revelations  
we woeful walkers would yet be in darkness,
in this waking dream, imagining light
from a place that had none  
I dreamed of your funeral…

I carried you
through a minefield, past ***** traps;
though the mortars lobbed their lethal loads
and the rifles spat speeding streams of death,
all was silent, until we reached the end of the field,
and I lay you on the grass

you thanked me, and asked me
to hold you--you were so cold, you said
I put my arms around you, and looked back
across the field--a stretch of fire now, blazing
the night sky, casting eternal light on you and me,
two young brothers I spied, prostrate,
still, on the other side of the field
we had crossed…still

on the other side

fields of yellow flowers
pasted on Morpheus’ silky screen
could not hide the blood and screaming
in that steamy sea of green

I wake to this in dawn’s gray hours
and can’t return to sleep
with morning’s feeble promise
we no longer follow like sheep

what force inside feeds the powers
that will not let us forget
we once were young and killers
and still owe an eternal debt
to those who died at our hands
and… to whomever let us live
but still dream of flowered lands
where those we slaughtered, can’t forgive

white winged water walker
filled my dreamy head
sliding, gliding on shimmering glass
far from my land locked bed

once a child and filled with awe
my visions shamelessly bold
a water walker I would be
and straw could turn to gold

but spinning orbs wash one with age
and weight one's wings with years
flights of endless prowess
are grounded by groundless fears

yet when blind night blocks the light
and one's mind is free to explore
childhood's chirping vision
is again allowed to soar

white winged water walker
filled my dreamy head
sliding, gliding on shimmering glass
far from my land locked bed

once a child and filled with awe
my visions shamelessly bold
a water walker I would be
and straw could turn to gold

but spinning orbs wash one with age
and weight one's wings with years
and flights of endless prowess
are grounded by groundless fears

yet when blind night blocks the light
and one's mind is allowed to explore
childhood's chirping vision
is again allowed to soar

before the fireflies
made an appearance

about the time cicadas
began their buzz

when the men were lighting
after dinner ****

and moms clanging dishes,
a noisy resentment

I was on the street, with brothers
named Harry and Johnny

playing baseball, mostly
missing our catches

it had not registered in our grade school heads
dusk was not good light for hardball

nor had we learned what it was like
to see anything die

save the bees we suffocated in jars
(forgive us our sins, Father),

though that night, the last day of school,
the stars were all aligned

IF the creator wanted us to see
mangled mortality:

he came around the corner of
Vandenburg and Vine

in his graduation gift--a hot new Chrysler,
all chrome and crank

the telephone pole he hit didn't see him, or
complain--it remained straight, tall

when the driver went through the windshield
and his skull introduced itself to wood and pitch

my dad was the first to come through
the door, though other fathers followed

I recall colors, though muted
by the fading light

red, red, pink, even white and gray and blond--his hair,
flattop still in place

well, it was on the half head I saw
from across the street

where Harry, Johnny and I were conscripted
to stand

my mother brought a yellow towel,
to stop bleeding I thought I heard

but my father never used it, telling her
instead to bring the green army blanket

which he draped over the boy's body the very second
before we saw the ambulance lights

by then, the fireflies were beginning
their dance

we were told to go inside, to hide our
eyes from the body on a stretcher

the slamming of the ambulance doors,
which I watched through our window

while my father used Lava soap to wash his hands;
then my mother pulled the drapes

blocking from view the pole, the crushed car,
and the glow of fireflies drifting above it all

Dylan is dead.
no, not Bob, you Philistine,
Dylan Thomas who implored us
to rage against the night;
so are a passel of poets
and penners, but not I

Emily heard her fly buzz,
well before her eyes shut; she
was a wee bit obsessed
with the reaper

Hemingway's also a goner;
guts enough to shove a shotgun
in his mouth--mostly I wonder if
he tasted blue gunmetal like I did,
and who cleaned his brains
off the wall?

nobody had to clean a red dollop
of mine, for the firing pin was askew
and all I got was a click, and a sense of shame,
and impotence more flaccid than
the one which put the barrel
in my mouth

hell, how hard is it
to **** yourself--I guess harder
than I thought, since I never bought
another rifle

so Dylan is dead
Em and Hem too, but you
are reading these lines without
contemplating your own demise
I suspect

after all, it's early spring
and a time of new things
clawing their way into the light
thinking nothing of the terminal
night -- but it's just a sun dip away:
ask Dylan or Hemingway, or even JFK
but I wouldn't bother the Belle
of Amherst

she would make parting
sweeter than sorrow, and she
never tasted the cold lead, or spoke
with fear or dread of the dumb
and the dead

she never murdered
men in black pajamas  
in a forest primeval...

I didn't see their spirits
ascending, in ribbons of light,
only rivers of their red blood
soaking the green ground,
yet today ravenous
for more it seems

why would she rage
against the good night, when
her carriage waited patiently for her,
and immortality, her vessel bound
for a light Dylan and I
will never see

Earthquake

somebody (!)
shook my couch
nobody (!) there
but me
and geology

Etched in my memory is a chair in the Rexall Drug, Easter eve--me sitting on the edge of it, waiting

And the despairing look on my father's face while he too waited,  for some pill or potion to heal my big brother

Sitting across from me, asleep, was a woman--I believe the oldest person in the world

Together we were half this lonely planet, my father and the apothecary the rest of its survivors

Every other soul was gone, perhaps snatched early, by some unexpected rapture

Resurrection was nigh, but I was expecting only an egg hunt, and perchance a chocolate bunny


Across the street, a church sat in silence, its steeple cross barely visible through the Rexall's glass door

Thunder echoed through the night, and for a flickering moment, it was daylight outside


The druggist handed my father a small white paper bag, for which he gave thanks

He said, "Let's go, David." Not "Bud" or "Podner," and he didn't wait for me to get up

Even though it had begun to rain, he moved slowly through the lot to our parked car


Every time I think of that night, I wonder who was born the next day, to take my brother's place

Death I discovered, is not on a schedule--the doctors said he had a year, maybe more

Gods don't explain themselves to men or monkeys, at least not to the mortals I know

Easter was a good day to die I guess, but if my brother thought so, he didn't say

at the first Missouri rest stop
on I-44, I stopped to ***, to walk
and to listen to strangers

this had been my habit of late
of late being the last ten years, since
I lost her, and sojourned solo

on the move, I would catch snippets:
a "this potato salad is stale," complaint
or a "I don't want to drive" protest

on this June day--summer solstice
I got lucky, for a couple spoke loudly
and I was hidden behind a fat oak

"I'm not going to have this child."
"You don't get to decide alone. It's --"
"No, it's not and it's my body!"

then he jumped up from the table
and marched mad steps to his Mercedes;
it was a royal red

and the hue matters not
to most of you, but it figures
clearly in my rear view

headed east again after I heard
what I was not intended to hear, I could
yet see them just behind my eyes

he, trying in vain to explain
that a few cells mattered--her muscularly
clinging to a convenient cleansing

their words echoing in my head
and in the blood red coach that carried
them east, to uncharted malaise

thou art
my McDonald’s
my Walmart
if Norman Rockwell were alive
he would paint you,
pay tribute to you
immortalize you in two dimensions
allow you to believe
you would stride forever
like golden arches
and prices that end in the magical, mystical 7
but alas, nothing that smells and tastes of today
or is “Made in China”
sold by blue apron clad armies
will be etched on mountain sides
you, like the Big Mac
will be recycled in short order
and surrender helplessly
to the mocking march of time

her parents would have nothing to do with the z,
naming her Elisa Beth

which few got right in her 65 seasons, for their habit
molded an EliZabeth every time  

we presume it mattered not to Elisa, Elisa Beth, because she was
born blind and deaf

her record of birth got it right, but her social
security card did not,

the checks were cashed by caretakers, who cared not
whether the letter snaked or zagged

her parents' obits also claimed they were survived by
an only daughter, EliZabeth

when she "met her reward," some two years past
there was no legacy in print

save a death certificate, which again blasphemed
her appellation with the alphabet's final figure

but on her gravestone, curiously, she was Elisabeth once more,
though what flat, mute slab could even such a score?

how could I not love you,
when you wrote of death, while others
courted coy flowers--I know you were not
a comely creature, and if you were Aphrodite,
perhaps you would have been love lathered
on cold Amherst nights, though I
suspect you would not have heard
a fly buzz when you died, for you
would not have been listening
for such a beatific symphony

from her window she could see
the shells of buildings the bombs battered--gray concrete
ghosts, haunting in their silence

Father said his ears
hadn't stopped ringing since the attacks, though he still
could hear her playing

and he expected her practice to continue
for one day, he promised, prayers would prevail, peace
would return, and her song would be heard

play, he entreated, for ivory, black
and white, has forgotten the evil of men, their carnage;
the notes know nothing except to be played

and to give pause for hope, when
more trenchant sounds demanded one’s attention,
still the song must remain

rummaging through the ruins
of the landfill, his sole fellow explorer
a cur, content when his snout sniffed mold
blissful when he discovered a can

his aspirations grander than the canine,
he hoped to find artifacts of the ancients,
and digging deep he did, an Apple, one of Job's
first magical machines, the monitor
dull but without a solitary crack

then a turntable, its diamond stylus
long turned to nub, veneer half peeled
by the blade of time--its final symphony spun
eons ago, or at least two dozen years

finally a Dr. Pepper sign, an old as time,
its 10, 2 faint but still there, its 4 long gone
the masterpiece's artist never lamenting
its weathered fate: he too had his time
his labors filling his pockets, pleasing
his eyes, and immortalizing him
in the open bowels of the earth

the sea had shown me mercy,
though I had asked for none
it had been cruelly benevolent
oblivious to my pious intentions

instead of a pummeled, pocked and putrid body
I stood ironically whole on the soggy sand
on a parched piece of land
with only sharp rocks for companions

so now rather than a few wretched gasps and gulps
and a smooth blue descent to sleepless sleep
I could slowly bake red on this barren isle
and be a feast for ***** after an eternal while

Teresa climbs on the bus
before the sun, if she has
the fare

to get there, where she
makes the bread; she's been at this
two of her nineteen years  

yet she has fears, they will
come for her--green card or not;
though they like her rolls

she kneads the big *****, pulls,
pinches, a sculpting of dough, a laying
of trays, one after another

then, from the Iglesias,
they come, decked in their finery
though she does not see

she only hears the litany
of language she can't comprehend,
a clanging of trays, laughter

the urging of the jefe to work
faster, bake the bread; the communion
wafers did not fill them

now they are here, breaking fast,
forgetting the words they just heard
the songs they sang

Teresa does not complain; she
is glad to feed the worshipers, though
they will never know her name

nor will they stop for
her in the pouring rain,
the blistering sun

Teresa never wavers
next Sabbath will be the same:
dawn, the dough, the oven

it is the work--her hands
which make the bread others break,
the grace granted to serve

holy, holy, holy...

Teresa climbs on the bus
before the sun, if she has
the fare

to get there, where she
makes the bread; she's been at this
two of her nineteen years  

yet she has fears, they will
come for her--green card or not;
though they like her rolls

she kneads the big *****, pulls,
pinches, a sculpting of dough, a laying
of trays, one after another

then, from the Iglesias,
they come, decked in their finery
though she does not see

she only hears the litany
of language she can't comprehend,
a clanging of trays, laughter

the urging of the jefe to work
faster, bake the bread; the communion
wafers did not fill them

now they are here, breaking fast,
forgetting the words they just heard
the songs they sang

Teresa does not complain; she
is glad to feed the worshipers, though
they will never know her name

nor will they stop for
her in the pouring rain,
the blistering sun

Teresa never wavers
next Sabbath will be the same:
dawn, the dough, the oven

it is the work--her hands
which make the bread others break,
the grace granted to serve

holy, holy, holy...

words he could not understand
flew over his head--sparrows at first,
vultures as the hours passed; he

could see the creatures
spilling from mouths, eager fledglings
escaping the nest, white

coat wizards
birthed them, casting some spell
on the mother, on all

mothers who heard the flapping
of these wings, who saw the buzzards gather
until they swooped down upon

him, helpless, as their talons
snatched him from her arms, their wings
in frenzied dance, fluttering  

to a symphony of the ******
carrying carrion and soul to a bedeviled den
she could not see

Fifty years ago today

A half century. Yes--seems like a long time when we say it that way, sublimely forgetting time is a dimension we chop cheaply for convenience. In earth time, in galaxy time, the vast blue stretch since the cosmos’ first coding coughing of carbon, that five decades has been but a clipped comma in a thousand page tome, with a single stout capital letter being the history of a country, and a verbose sentence or two being the tale of our two legged species. For me, the 50 years since that day has been most of my book--nearly all that has been written since the dawn of light.

I was on the Kanto plains of Japan, so it was already Christmas--though I guess my world has always spun faster than most. During the night, my father had assembled my new black three speed 26 inch Raleigh English racer, a serious upgrade from my red 24 inch Schwinn, my first bike, long lost to spinning memory, and likely the property of some dump in the heartland.

The new bike stood beside the table in our large combination kitchen/dining room of our temporary officer quarters. I can’t recall if it was too cold to ride that day, but I probably ventured out, either in the real rays of the sun or in the land of imagination, the two being of equal measure in the realm of memory.

A month before, my father woke me with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. Like others who were old enough to remember, the events of that November day have much crisper edges than any other, including the Raleigh racer Christmas or any Christmas I can recollect.

Tomorrow is another Christmas. I won’t look at that day too much when I am walking in the park this afternoon, for tomorrow is not waiting for me at all. It will be there even if I am again dancing with stardust. More likely, I will be here, on the same rolling rock, eating the flesh of a fallen gobbler and making new memories I will recall only hazily in fifty hours. And if I were promised another fifty marching years, I might lament their passing before they arrived, knowing full well they too would be filled with forgetting.

like a tin cup scraping along iron bars
was the clank of the clock
no longer a liquid, lingering of seconds
but a staccato rapid fire of time
signaling the approach of my farewell rhyme

the man in black asked again if I wanted to pray
and mumbled something somber about judgment day
but I really heard nothing
beyond the light's florescent hum
and had no illusions
about what was to come

in the world of “before this room”
when my rage ripped life from limb
I had known that closing my eyes a final time
would open them to the wretched writhing of
nothing

still
in these last lapping of seconds
with the needle patiently waiting a few feet away
I heard echoes of those oft chanted lines
about some kingdom at hand
one that I could never enter
even if it were really there

Frost spoke,
of ice, and fire
in apocalyptic prose
proffering different opinions
of the earth’s demise
if it be fire,
he surmised it was because of the ire
of raging hearts and unfulfilled desire
not of splitting atoms and infinite fire
if it be ice
he said that too would suffice
for frozen hearts do not feel the pain
of millions starving on the blighted plain
funny, ice has shrunk since Frost’s time
but few would argue we are more sublime
for denial and avarice are alive and well
and whether fire or ice, it can still be hell

the shelters were full
surely that is why I found her
in the alley

she was as old and white as time...
probably three score, at most, though curled up
like a babe in the womb

her eyes were yet open:
what had she seen last, what had
her last supper been?

and where were the disciples
with bread and wine, with body and blood
while she froze on the hard earth?

I feel flat lined, on this flat earth
now and then, when I follow the wild pigs’ path
into the thorny mesquite, the scrub oak,
I see a spike on my graph    

when I find their fresh droppings,
dung still steaming on morning’s crisp ground,
perhaps I have found, something to make
my heart pump enough to register a blip,
a puny peak on the scrolling page    

true, this is not
the rubber tree jungle where
I first learned terror and trembling unto death
where I hunted other prowling prey, who had no sharp fangs or tusks
to tear my young flesh,  but could, with a fateful finger flick
spill my rushing red blood in the puke brown soup
of the rice paddies

those days now are seen
faintly, through a milky haze,  
though for others it seems, recalled
at night, in dread dreams

I do not share their nightmares--if I did  
I would not wander into the winter woods
to face my foe, to hear its gray growling, hoping
its charge will be quick on this flat land,
and that the thumping in my chest
will paint a beautiful sharp line
on the pallid parchment

in this pasture,
one hundred days past,
scores cheered as the current coursed
through Bundy's body

this evening, I am here,
solitaire, except for my *****,
the cattle, and the fireflies sprinkled
against the night

my spaniel nips
at the flies, but they are quick,
eluding her jaws to perform
a brilliant alchemy again

amidst this spectacle,
cows chew their cud, unperturbed, unaware
it seems, magical lightning comes without
thunder from these creatures

the bovines don't scatter
as I walk among them--perhaps they’ve forgotten
those revelers here on a crisp winter night, eager
to celebrate an extinguishing of light

I make tracks
evidence someone was HERE

until they disappear, with wind's sweep, or rain's moody fall

in elements' absence, time alone will suffice, and not play nice, with my tracks

fade to black they will,
still, I'll stomp my feet, producing prints,

eyes closed to their
ephemeral reign

my daughter bought me one
of those extensions for my cellphone--to take selfies
so I wouldn't forget who I was--as if looking at a "me"
in the face of my phone would remind me
I am John Smith, I am 73

and I had been an engineer
at a missile range for a 45 years and two months
that I had lost a finger in Vietnam and my wife
died in a automobile accident three years ago
and her name was Emma

but my daughter says I never,
not once called her mother anything
but "M" and now, whenever I read,
hear, say or write the letter M
I get a lump in my throat

my daughter has notes taped
on every surface of my house, reminding
me to eat, and take my meds--she placed
a big one on the door: DON'T GO OUTSIDE
but I wouldn't anyway

I like it here, where I think
I have been a long time, and it is filled
with things my daughter calls memories
and photos of a lady I don't recognize
with a sticky note on each one

the notes are all yellow and have
an "M" on them; I get that lump in my throat
when I see them, and sometimes water comes
from my eyes, though I don't know why
because Emma didn't look like that

many have suggested fire
but I choose not to become cremains  
I want a plain pine bed
no magic elixirs
in my veins

why waste fluid
and time, treasured commodities,
before the *******

if law did not proscribe,
I would gladly let a stout stranger
toss me into a raging river

though my kin
may protest, fishes, crustaceans
would rejoice

after all,
lesser creatures
are always hungry
and grateful

I witness
the marching armies,
some trudging through the sludge of slaughter,
some gliding as if on polished glass  
others flying on sympathetic currents  
few faithfully, but ALL fatefully, moving
onward, to the deep sleep      

like a mute director in life’s one act play
I watch many in their final moments
some in stillness so sweet
my camera gently weeps ( though not I)  
others I record being ripped apart
in metal madness, yet
I don’t blink an eye
even while wiping the
blood from my hands        

you, Robert, music maker at heart,
meat cutter by trade, scored my lens  
leaving it forever altered
I knew you, a year younger than I,
I saw you, beaten down  
by the grave gravity
we cherish yet dread,
you, trudging through
the slaughter, one  
of the harshly humbled,
you, found the right rope  
and your wife found you
on a Sunday morning,
hanging
in the garage,
your letter to the world the clang
of the alarm that woke her  
and hastened her slow march
to the church, where other directors
took over the filming, and  
closed the curtain, after
the final choking act  

I cannot miss you  
I,
(who only wistfully recall
the millions of marchers near and far)  
felt your Sunday sojourn  
**** the air from my lungs
I can only be grateful  
your living and dying  
made me feel
the palled pain
and undying dread

in a pale green room,
one sat, rocking slowly, an improvement,
the white ones said, but catatonic
was not a word she knew  

another crouched in the corner, also swaying to and fro
her Haldol doubled the week before, so she stopped scratching her legs  
but not before she had carved a Picasso on her thigh, a Dali on her calf  
****--there were no “cutters” then, black clad children who needed razors  
we had our own claws

my cell mate rocked too,
in her sleeveless jacket, by the window,
where the mesh cut the afternoon sun
into dappled diamonds on her frock      

the oldest woman in the world
crawled the linoleum highways counting each square
spouting off formulas, to prove the universe had order
though she did not have to say much to convince us
this was eons before “chaos theory” and we knew all the butterflies
flapping in all the world would not make a sound  
their vibrations scarcely noted, and no hurricanes
would emerge from their winged tempests  

I rocked too, and ****** my pants,
because I could, and if I did not, the white ones
and the zombie zoo doctor god, might decide  
to release me to the warped world, where
I would be expected to never rock again,
where there would be no queen counting squares,
where the clock would try in vain to measure the sun
and the scent of ammonia would be replaced
by nothingness

three years I worshipped
in the red brick cathedrals
by the ugliest lake on the planet,
but I was cast out of the holy halls,
with mounds of Mellaril, and other sacred potions in pill form  
to see the “outreach caseworker”, though I never knew
what she was reaching for  

my husband had divorced me,
both my sons were in Dallas, dealing cards
at Wall Street casinos,  holding the aces for themselves or a chosen few,
like I really knew anything about what  
filled their days  

my sister took me in,
fed me finger foods, had her maid bathe me  
and invited the ghosts from my past into her house  
they all hugged me and told me how nice my hair looked  
now that I was no longer yanking it out by the fist full  
and choking on it as it went down    

they smelled of sycophantic scents from Macy’s
and Neiman Marcus, and I longed for the odor of my cellmate,
who had to be submerged in a steaming sea once a week, after
they had pumped enough of Morpheus’ brew in her to
mellow a mammoth    

I missed her, and her truculent silence
and the way her arms writhed in her jacket,
like so many snakes squirming to be free,
or perhaps those were the last sin eating serpents
in their death throes, but I would never know
for in 1000 days and 1000 nights, her jacket
was never removed, for the white ones feared what  
black storm waited inside, so they allowed it to hide  
someplace in her fetid carcass  

now when I look across the charcoal stillness
of my room, cluttered with dead distractions,
I imagine her there, on her cot, producing anthems
on mad marching afternoons, or singing lullabies
in evenings last gasps, all without making a sound,  
then my eyes well with tears, for I know
she would miss me too, and worry
what I was doomed to hear and smell
now that her mystic music and stench
were stolen from me