There were disagreeable racists on my left,
and I wanted to tell them that at least a couple
of the devoted in their ranks were Canadian.

I’m getting old way fast, man,
but I can still cause a lot of trouble
in three sentences or less.

And I didn’t have anything for the Thanksgiving Mob.
You can’t tell them that the moon is going to slap us
in the back of the head any day now. You can’t ask a woman
her favorite books from the long ago study hall fallout
before she knocks out
your teeth with an obsolete iPhone.

What you do,
what works for me when my skin is getting bad,
and my face feels impossibly hot from another cold sweat,
is either get the hell out of the way,
or stay still, and hope you wake up in 1957.

With air-conditioning,
and a professional nude model who doesn’t look like
anyone you’ll be related to fifty years later.

Better have some medical insurance handy.
Or a friend who hasn’t figured out yet
that they don’t owe you a damn thing.

I don’t have either,
but I had been wanting to head on over
to wherever or whenever I lost my suitcase for months,
and I was finally enough of public access television wreck
to have nothing in the world that could hold me back.

A guy I once knew,
corrupt and eager to die,
but he really should have been a therapist,
would have called that a breakthrough.

I don’t call it anything.
Not as smart as early testing indicated.

I just go out whenever I can,
lose more and more priceless things by choice,
and tap a rhythm into the nauseous brick walls.

Music for those of us who use sleight of hand to confuse
the laws of the consequences waiting for those
who swear that dawn came around before they did.

No one should admire people like that.

And if you must spend your time and money on them,
at least have better things to do when they’re suddenly in a hurry,
and can’t be bothered to leave clues as to their whereabouts
in ten years’ time.

03/05/2013

Posted on 03/06/2013
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