The Portland Moment

What drives what I am
is the thrill I get when dark syllables
clink together.  You might say
I’ve got a thing for such sound aggression.
A thing for near-shattering. A thing
for hairline cracking.

Other than that I’ve got no love
for anything about this mess
less required than breathing, eating,
pissing, shitting, sleeping, fucking,
or commiserating.

I call these moments of noting
hard truth about myself
“Portland Moments”
for the first one I recall,
when I was smoking a joint
on the fourth level of a downtown garage
in Portland, Maine.  The sky was sky blue,
the air was winter cold, the ocean
as ocean as it could possibly be —
for half a second I believed the Sixties
had it right and all you needed was weed
and light, and love would make it all work.

That was not the Portland Moment, though —

that came a second later
while ducking the cops and hacking,
my lungs cough-laughing at me
crouching behind the car; I said,
gee, sorry, almost had myself fooled
into thinking I was someone else

and not the guy
who’s got a thing for aggression,
a thing for near-shattering, a thing
for hairline cracks and rough repair —

a guy much like Portland, Maine,
where even the hippies walk around
with punk rockers glaring
from the rooms behind their eyes.