What was once
a mission has become
a compulsion —

I’ve stopped thinking
and feeling except in poetry,
and I am no poet, so

if You can find a way clear
to letting me go
without another word from me,

then do.

She’s unloading Barbie dolls again. She does this
once or twice a year, dumping their limbless, headless bodies
off the edge of the back porch
into an old refrigerator box.

The neighbors watch her, the way we always do. Hell, I watch too.
From every building, from every roof, every window
and stoop, we watch her doing what we wish we could.
The neighbors always know the truth — that her hours of collecting

the broken toys from sad girls all over the city have led to this
again, and while we can’t imagine what drives her, we understand obsessions like hers,
obsessions like how Mary’s always calling Dali time to one and all —
“it’s eight pigeons past yesterday’s news,”

and how the mean ass beat cop is practicing the Miranda warning sotto voce
so he never gets it wrong again…”you have the right to remain
silent, anything you say…” Show me irresistible urges and I’ll show you
any down at the heels neighborhood full of mistakes no one will ever forgive.

You ought to join us. Use these words in a letter to yourself: “I was only looking for a free ride
past my own obsessions when I moved here to Anonymous, USA.” Prove to me you belong with us. You’re new here, but I bet you’ve got your own urges to deal with —
and if not, maybe you can give Barbie Girl

a hand moving that box to the garage
once it’s full which should be some time past the longhorse
vault of heaven, if Mary’s got it right today. If you’re not crazy like us,
at least prove you can hang with the gang.

when I put my mouth
on you

I think of the figs
and cinnamon

I can’t afford to buy
right now

and which
I don’t miss much at all

On a June Sunday
a jam session
sets up
outside the
Church of the Immaculate Conception
on Elder Street.

Maggie
stubs her Djarum butts
on the lines
of her gospel.
JoJo
comes with his guitar,
needles Jesus direct
with no desire
to choke down
white bread.
Gabriel
burps his horn
and fruit bursts
from the limbs of the Bare Tree.

And Mickie
on the battered snare
holds herself tall and bold
even as she ducks out for a moment
to enter
the tomb and see
for herself
what the Madonna’s
come to at last.

Up front
the Virgin’s
downturned face
shines.

“Did you know,”
says Mickie to Mary,
“that your storied Inside
is just our Outside
that’s been approved and gilded?
It may have all happened a legend ago,
but it’s still a fact.

We’re not that
different. I could have been
you, could have let God
clasp me tight —

but the way Maggie smokes and
shouts, the communion
JoJo lets play on his face,
righteous Gabriel thinking
every hymn’s a gas
to be ignited:

how could I come in
from that hothouse
and love this too-clean cold?

Do you recognize
me, your sister, a fellow
virgin paroled by jazz
and smack? Is it too much for you to say
that the Outside is what makes
the Inside?

That Baby you had —
you gave Him up, let go
too soon because
something called you. We know
how that feels better
than almost anyone in here

except, maybe, for that former girl
in the back pew
who keeps turning her head
toward the door
and tapping her foot.”

Once she’s back Outside,
Mickie matches
JoJo run for run, and Maggie
belts a pulse across
Gabby’s fanfares.

The girl
who was once inside comes
out at the end of the service
then walks home
thinking of the shattered handcuffs
painted
on the shell of Mickie’s drum.

The guy on stage says
that poems are always
about beginnings and endings. If
you want middles, write a novel, he says.

Some in the audience nod,
but my first thought is that
he obviously can’t think
outside the box.

Later, I decide
that you should not write a poem
about your drug experiences
unless you know for certain that you are
the reincarnation of William S. Burroughs.

(If you are unsure,
you should be able to answer ‘yes’ to the following questions:

Do you know better?
Do you have a birthmark that looks like a bullet piercing a shotglass?

Note: it is a requirement that
both criteria must be present
to confirm the incarnation.)

Later still, I realize
I want to hear someone say,
“Y’know, I used to cut/drink/drug/fuck inordinately
and insanely, I once had a broken heart
and a vampire fixation, I’m broken beyond repair —
but doesn’t the revelatory taste of this coffee
just CRUSH that precious little pyre to embers?”

And then I get it,
understand that the first poet was right.
I realize suddenly I’m the very personification
of the middle and I am indeed
useless here.

The young here
share their heart’s content,
seeing that as
a means to an end. The logic goes
that once you’ve got

the easy stuff knocked, once you’ve
picked all the low apples
from the smart tree,
it’s gonna be a sweet glide
to closure.

Let them angels like them apples. Let the young
imagine Eden sprouting from their trials.
Me, I’m gonna keep worrying this old bone I found
buried at the base of that tree
before the sword and the fire drove me away…

it must fit somewhere, probably between other things
I haven’t found yet, but if I have to get burned
hunting for them I will, if I have to lose a limb getting close enough
I will, and if I have to keep barking
about the things in the middle…well, woof.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTE: that first line refers to a poem by Dean Young that Chris Fortin read at his excellent feature at the Asylum last night. I used it as a starting point, and my poem should in no way be construed as a comment on Chris’ fine work and/or his superb set.

I’m safer
when I’m still,
sleeping or comatose
from something or other —

I don’t hurt myself
when I’m unconscious
because my mind
is my worst punishment — in there

there’s a whipman on a merry go round
and what passes over and over
leaves marks — so when I am
not using it, not allowing

the inquisition to roll
on and on,
I am snug
within —

let me sleep now,
my dreamless heart
blue from lack of oxygen
but otherwise unbruised; please,

let me sleep. Let me
go into the night.
Let me go the way anyone
goes who doesn’t know this —

and bless me that I will be
unfamiliar, one day,
with how it feels to prefer
dead calm to the whirl of day.