American Papyrus: 25 Poems

American Papyrus: 25 Poems

Copyright (C) 2002 by Steven Sills AN AMERICAN PAPYRUS: 25 POEMS by Steven Sills Post Annulment 2 Afferent, the city bus cramps to the curb and brakes through Solipsistic muteness With an exhaltation startled and choking. As the sun blazes upon the terminal's Scraped concrete The shelved rows of the poor men Hear the sound die on the pavement In a gradual dying echo. A cigarette succumbs to the voice as Carrion brought to life; all the tattered people awaken; And a man spits toward the tire of the bus, But misses. And as he watches his own spit vanish From the hard crest of the world, And silently scrapes his lunch pail against A corner of a metallic bench as if expecting the pale to bleed... And hoping it would bleed...he tries to remember the angles He and his wife stood to project The intermingled shadows that both Had labeled as their marriage. He enters the second bus: Its coolness sedating the skin that Overlaps his troubled mind. His thoughts pull together Like the light, cool flow of the air conditioning. He feels a little pacified. He knows the shadow's intangible depth: Its vastness having overpowered him these months Until he could not reach the logic that told him To find himself outside its barriers. As he stares out of the window He wonders why she has left. How could she have left without indication When he has remained angled toward work So that he and his wife can stay alive? In the bus window he sees his diaphanous face--the windows Of the Hilton, where he has a job in maintenance, Piercing solidly through its head. He rings the bell. The idea of her not home, and legally annulled From his life--her small crotch not tightened to his desperate Thrusts--makes him feel sick. He gets down from the bus. He goes to work. He suddenly knows that being in love is not love. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Earth I use her earth to plant my seed-- My limbs twisting around the collective molecules, Trying to dig in. Only the obscurity of my body Presses so fully that it is neither Body nor bed nor the intersection of both, But euphoric traction; And then, planted and repulsed, Only the seam of backbone minutely faces her, That bed of earth. With all conscious force I breathe the aloneness that intangibly defines the Air. I swallow its ambrosia Of depth and ask myself Why I ever married the woman. There is void. Then a hollow answer calls my name and says "it was time." I realize myself in movement, parting the scene. I use what has been planted for the reaping-- My suit tucks me into its structure of cotton; And soon a building will be again the structure Around men of cotton suits, pushing a product. Lost, I drink my coffee alone on the stoop. She had asked to fix me breakfast But I would not let her. My miniature is one and black. I drink me in when I am not Pressed by the coffee's steam. Cars' casketed phantoms of people Chasing up and down Dunlavy Street of Houston After something--their whole lives after something-- Come and go from consciousness like respiration. The people plant and reap. Who can count all of their Insignificant names?-- Animals that are not created sensible enough To propagate unless lost to frenzy, Caught in structures without meaning. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bar-Room Buddies We Mongoled Human experience. We pushed it into our mouths As the crisp pretzels of which the shape became salty dust At our tastes: the crispness of life, And we Mongoled human experience. The tequila, that Sandras or Cassandras, or whomever it had beeen At the moment of malevolently blessing our heated and Maddening consumption, was what we left Our wives for; and then hardened ourselves on The springless cushions of the sofas of our friends Whom we eventually forgot the names of: The wetness of human experience that we Mongoled, And felt the bladed emptiness Of stomachs that could not consume food On mornings after. But the Angels of bar rooms continually Appeared before darkened stages where, in front of guitars, We played. They apppeared at various stages to the weeks of the years. They came, silently whispering themselves off As Sandras or Cassandras; Stared up at us for two hours; and disappeared. The reappearance of their light enamored us, and we left And followed but found bats that offered No shelter, and often caves we could not fit into Or were forbidden from entering. We invested our capital In the Silicon Valleys of this great nation. Third-world bitches, in factories, became sick for our chips. We held power. We bred metals and bought the ownership titles Of properties, but could not find a home of the world. We married again and brought forth children Who were duplicate strangers of ourselves. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Retarded Legs clamp around the rim-- The whole seated body sticking slightly As moaning howls come from his Paralyzed mouth. It is after having Put him to bed for a nap, and then the pot, That this woman who would dab the bile From his bed like one who napkins a spill from A tablecloth, does not clean away The substance behind the smell Which predominates over the bathroom urinal And aggravates his senses. No woman to do these tasks, And then to rim her hand Under the butt; No woman to drag him from The pot, After she has had his body bent Toward her for the wiping, And flop him onto the bench In the shower; no woman... She sits, cigarette limp in her mouth, Thinking that the day has almost ended. And the stars she stares out at From the living room of the group home She remembers are other earths limping Half-free in the grips of other Dying suns. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Houston In Houston's summers the gods Use the clouds as urinals For three minutes daily. In Houston the Boat-People Come from planes. Inner-city--intermingled and alone Like its green Buffalo-Bayou Strewn only in the imaginations Of those who run along it briefly. A mile from the bayou The settled imagination of a Nine year-old Vietnamese girl Allows a mangled brown horse To elongate and flatten out To the reality of the rolled up carpet (All because of the rain). She feels the wetness now beginning To seep into her clothes; She raises herself; she sees the old Cuban Walking from the house with hands To the sky, as if to make the heavens appear a little longer In the manner that the downtown buildings, From Dallas Street on, by their Stories of windows draw down the sky's enormity from measurement Both extensive and inadequate; And she follows him. Apart And yet they both think about the Vietnamese Teenager with curlers in her hair Who yells "boo" behind doors That are entered; The Cambodian boy who To the view of the Montrose area Pours on the bare shrubs, And then strips and pours upon himself, The water from a hose, and that both animal and plant Glisten in the sun As if they have been greased; Falling into Houston's world of high buildings From the descending planes While hoping that the big world would Not overpower their memories; And the Cubans, in house #2 always yelling of "Miami." They believe that Cambodian refugees Always clean house #1, That Africans never clean themselves, and that Laotians often pour rice down the drains Causing the faucets of the house to stop-up; And that the welcome-center Manager Does not care to bring over a little clothing And a little food or take them on little trips To the Social Security Office or the doctor's office Past 5 p.m.-- But of different seconds in that minute, Different lengths, and various perceptions. She remembers the ugly man In Vietnam that ran from the police And then a scar around his eye Opened from the clubs and the blood Tried to escape him completely As the body attempted to pull itself From the street, and could not. He remembers thinking that the Cranium of an old man is always heavy On the neck, and that his Is becoming like this. He desires to clasp the gate That is around the Hispanic cemetery And watches the cars on Allen Parkway, below, Curve and toward the sun Become a gleam moving endlessly And instantly gone. He desires to arrive there and Read a few tombstones Before and after watching. She desires to imagine horses Carrying her away from here to the West, And other horses following with her family behind. She desires to follow the Cuban that she fears Since he is moving away from the refugee houses. There are no horses in inner-city; and The Hispanic cemetery cannot be found To souls wanting to rest there. "Este cerca de calle Alabama?" He wonders,. The rain stops. The hammers and saws peel their sounds from a roof. And he notices her steps Despite the stronger sounds; halts; And glances behind him as shingles fall ahead, While wanting her to completely leave him And wanting her to come with him. In Houston's summers, At certain areas, shingles like The god's shit falls from housetops And the dung dries in the air, Flattens, and ricochets to sidewalks. In Houston Cubans pack From refugee houses And plan to fly away into America, and depart Far from the Castilian hot-dog vender Of Herman Park waiting for The thirsty and hungered And those ignorant of what they want But know that they want something And so come to buy from her Who wants people to come to her For more than the chips Because the hotdogs are overpriced, Who formulates That she is unskilled And that a computer course would answer it all; Far from the Netherland psychologists who Stares at her ebony reflection In Rothko Chapel's dyed pool; Apart from others, and no-one, all Pulling alone for humanity to both Come and go from their lives. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Politics of Herb's Woman Waitresses lightly frisbeeing out Dishes of breakfasts Catching glimpses of Colonel North's Photos on the front sides Of customers' papers and Formulating judgments Of rebel or martyr From an appearance And a few words that Drifted in when the Hands relaxed plates to table mats; Farmers wishing the seeds To suddenly open to be plucked up faster So that they are not The last ones laid in By their hands; Little "third-world" nations of people hoping For the great debtor nation to continental-drift To bankruptcy, painless and alone; And nearly empty of thoughts--Herb's woman, Jeanie, Behind the Ellison Building standing With concrete drilling its stiffness Through her soles. There had been a time-- With face raised from her age-smelted pose To the ever firm stories of that building-- That she would think of receiving her paycheck so she could Go to K-Mart and have something. But now years on top of each other, Uncountable to her, She continues guiding The few of the masses of cars That turn into the lot Where to park: in winters Conscious of the visibility Of her cold breathing, And summers with the scents Of greased telephone poles And sights of light gleaming off Car windows, she thinks Of buying old junk from garage sales For her yard sales, with the same prices, So as to recall the sounds of human voices Other than her own. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brumfield His job was a novitiate where there was no operator's manual With which to have faith in, and no rules But to move with the dustmop pushed before him Along the empty corridor, and then down a staircase Where he could descend to more passive depths in cleaning. At home he would smell the odor of his bare feet coming to him; Would see the blue under his toe nail that looked like marble; And these would be dominant sensations Though he would be vaguely aware of them. Beneath his bended legs he would sweep his hand To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick To capture a fuller scent as his fingers would flick His unshaven face. Then in his only room where the bare mattress Was lain along with his leather jacket And the dirty underwear cuddled around a clean toilet-- Where the Rosary hung on a wall And the guitar leaned in a corner-- he would do his push-ups. Most of those early mornings some train Would pour its breath to the weeds At the edge of the tracks, losing them In sound and mist of a voice Screaming out, alone, Through the cold and the living. His arms would tremble With the body weakening, and then demobilized, to the floor Before the count of fifty. Through the fogged condensation Of the upper corners to a window He would glance up at the train-- Each car imagined as the girlfriend, Cindy, Or the seminary, which he never Grasped or rejected and so They slipped away; Or his mother, who with cancer Began to close herself off to him-- Grasping one of those trains appearing at the time With the familiarity of two strangers Who recognized each other's desire to remain such. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Oracion A Traves De Gasshole (Patron Saint of Respiratory Therapy Workers) Saturday. All the same: A silvery grey Thin and undistinguishable From skies to parking lot In exact shadow; and he finds his car. The lid, laced in rust, By the turn of the key, Parts the grey as it pulls up; The grocery bag is dropped into the hole; And the ground beef slaps down on the floor Of the trunk as if a second slaughter, Its grounded nerves convulsing it A couple of inches nearer the oil stain. That meat, in body, that last moment After consciousness has severed itself; Skin peeling under the fur, hidden, But not from the last hot beams ahead Of emerging dusk, becoming crisp And then soaking up the hot blood, as the trachea, With the last of the air drawing in, begins to fold its walls; and he could imagine it Like he could imagine, from unexact memories, The woman, last night At the hospital, whom he began to like-- her body pulling cell by cell Apart before he had a chance To finish the rescue with the hose Descending the nostril as a rope, and then flushing out mucus. He gives the ground beef an air-born somersault to the bag And closes the lid that is connected to the vague light bulb of the trunk. The Gasshole's reflection on the trunk lid Is lank and curved; the appearance of his face With its facial tip of the nose and its greased Separation of hair like a wet muskrat in a metallic reflection. His face moving away, he sees an old Hispanic man Who walks from the area of cars carrying two bags Of groceries in an embrace that could be For weighty children; he thinks "The senescent, Carless, careless baws--turd! A campesino!," And he envisions himself as that: having to pull out the thorns That pierce through his tennis shoes as he shovels scattered cacti leaves from out of the back Of the pickup to his animals; And living in the dry ravine surrounded by houses made of wood That had been patted loosely together like adobes, beside The families of the kiln workers Who with him eat out Land's blessings And piss and shit out onto her graces, But himself happily not knowing the language of the Mexican people... Himself not wanting to know the language Of any people that his sister, Cindy, and college pal, Dave Broom-Up-The-Butt Echo. He does not wish to think of them Or the vaginas that are not his to put on Or the illusive woman who would be sick with him like a child lying on the sofa in fever and hoping That in the shadows on the wall and the Passing sounds that are concentrated on her mind One will bring deliverance--only placing the deliverance On him and yet loving him for himself Beyond that need. And while unlocking the door of his car He feels that the recreation in life is also a routine: A routine of sharing and parting, And at the end one is grounded and tossed Before the validity of his own Perceptions is resolved. But he is alive, Now; and he will put away his groceries; Read a chapter of his Biblia, A cenotaph of the dead.. maybe a verse; think of forgetting mass and mailing in his tithing And to veg' himself away a few hours Before he would have another night Of throats, lungs and The air of the masses. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Come (Camp Wonderland for the Retarded, Lake of the Ozarks) Grabbing the already read letter, Slipping out hot and wet From the bare mattress-- Like Sweet Pea's turds Right before His psychomotor seizures, Only without a softness to stub myself Into--stiff and hard I drop From the cold rim of the bunk (Even if I awaken The idiots below). With non-syllables and vowellessness A pitch that is language enough To keep this man, Jim, From wherever The unassimilated disappear Howls "He does not want me here" While its flesh of Jim beats the plastic urinal On the walls barricading a pillowed head. The joke is on him this time... All over him for the next hours. The letter's impression Writes and rewrites in my mind: Come, my sister calls to our father Like Ronnie's suppositories butting back. Only suppositories are meant to do so. Come, she speaks to me, And the shrink Shall put in touch All that he did to us. Tripping over Keith's mattress I step out in humid silence And wipe my cheeks. Two cabins, beside ours, simultaneously fry Bugs in blue, electric lights. Keith, a crippled rocking horse of autism, Scrapes the feet of his vibrating body To the bench where I sit. Sit, Keith; go back to bed, Keith; Go to the bathroom, Keith: In this camp I shape the minutes of his life To some acceptable pattern. He rubs his hands together As if trying to spark fire For the inhabitants Of his imaginary world. Stop that, Keith, I say. Sit, Keith. Keith sits: There is no coming out For him after twenty years This way, Or perhaps for me. The pale gas lamps are strewn around A small area of limbs In a corner of the sky-- All but patches are aflame Like a roof of a tent around The stakes, ready to break off And fall. Rock, Keith, As the sun is stroked So far into the lap of the night, Suffocating and as good as gone. The folding and unfolding Of a crinkled letter into squares; The imagining of the counselor Of cabin four And what a pulse would have created If her head had drowsed To my hand on the back of her seat On our way here; The general silent howling of "Come!"-- Keith does not cripple to this. He has no sister that calls a stranger back To erase and draw back Them both. He does not say "come!" All hours. He comes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Gentleman's Right He must have thought That there was some covenant of the old That bound each to move around it In a square orbit. he was fifty now, so there Must not have been any question: Lessen the speed at the train tracks; Stumble his car over their ribs; Swerve closely to the drive At a slower pace, and hope That where men dodge the bumping Of their tails from Parks For a private club, That one would come Out from the doors, partnerless. If not, he would have To go around the block Another time Like other old fags before-- The railway crippling with Its iron in each return raising, Cracking up from the skin of the street; Limbs of that bar's tree Waving down (some To the windshield), warning. Thoughts that the energy of youth Had some pivotal focus Made each imagined man to him Like a lollipop, but the parks would not do: There the man with the smashed fender Might be obligated to 69 A winner without a face-- a drag race ending in the winner's backseat, And on his tools which would rib in. And inside that bar where women snuggle Away their faces in equality, And where men rotate hips on the dance floor Like an earth's axes...this would not do: For there were no friends to affect Mutually and faggishly in embraces; And the young and sensitive Were Oriental and fonder Of the cigarettes They put in their faces And the beers that suddenly appeared Before them. This would not do: Mouth-hugging the earth On its bulge of life Or moving to songs Where the dances never end. He was an old fag and must retain A square orbit. It, at least, Was a gentleman's right And in accordance with the Manner of the fags. The block was long. In the shadows and oblique actualities He felt its length. His stomach tightened In fear of the length. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Transitional Mendacities No, the supremity of having been split off from A larger entity by being spit out From pussy lips while Reeking pain and havoc Like a living tongue pulled From aperture and den Is not sign enough That he is meant To be sustained As an integral part of the world, Unique and indispensable. Thinking about how much longer He will need to play out the day That issue is not his, and never has been. "The job was done" He could say, later, After the storm. Hand-limp, His broom dance sweeps Upended under an empty park bench-- Dirt caught under The tongues of his feet-- So his paycheck Will come in the mail And become bank figures He can suck from To keep he and his woman Housed and fed, and well enough To legally rape each other in embraces, Forgetful of their lives. The man has a son, and stands nights aching behind an assembly line, Sleeping the days away While his son goes to school. The son thinks his father Is thoughtless and dirty And his mother a grease-bitch For marrying him. The son grows up Between his college books, And begins to put it together: A society of men Wanting to take a variety Of stimulating produce-- Though some were more the makers Than the takers; The image of rightness In a man putting his hormones To the making of a company In a family; a family That needs a provider to survive; A man honorable and trapped And there are nights He awakens, gagging at the Sudden thought of a man Next to him Who had engaged his body In a lower form of sharing. And he wonders if embracing a world Of ideas can be done When all things cannot be believed; If humanism is Energy vented To avoid futility; And what grossness He would have to justify next-- All on those nights When self-perspectives Are swept under in change. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Man of Coal You knew it was coming: Twenty-three years and the mine Would notice you one time, Photocopied. A voice below bellows Your name, Dave, Into the settling air of coal dust. After you shut off the engines And descend beneath the dragline's skeletal Nose which canopies like a skyscraper on Its side in mid-air You confront a face You cannot see in the descending sun. Shadow-still, Enormous might engulfing over you To the height of The dragline's triple-tank wheels, You see him-- The heels on his leather boots Locked in the train-track grooves of dirt. As he hands the notice to you Its stiffness shakes In your calloused hand. You know that what is left of the day Is becoming cold; and despite the smell Of dirt there is a scent Of watermelon in the damp air, Although you do not know it as that smell Or that there is a smell at all, really. And yet a faintness of some half-knowledge That touches its weight lightly in your mind Drags itself into places you cannot touch. Pulling out of his shadow You think of how you might hand This sheet to your wife Like a child presenting to his mother An award from school: Your wife screaming laughter of relief As she hugs the paper to her breast; Or how your strong hand might sweat As you pick up the receiver of the ringing phone, Expecting that after saying "Hi" That one of your college children's voices would end The conversation there For you to hand the vibrations To your wife--but instead That child Congratulates you For no longer destroying the land. The noon hour whistle Vibrates the walls Of the hollow heavens To the cab; the thermos-well Of soup, sitting on your lap, you cannot see, but You feel its stillness Stagnating and absorbing The contaminating minerals Of the tin, walling in the contents; And still you want to turn on the ignition To finish out one more complete day In the twenty-three years here Of hard work. The quandary then snaps, and you escape. When out of the valley you enter the truck And close the door-- The second time harder, and it latches. You turn the key And the truck bounces to the highway. You stop at the sign; Stop the motor while Still on the dirt road; But in the end turn left, again, Home. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Maddog (Or Death to the Barbie-Dame Image) You said that it happened--that day you ran away From a self you buried underneath the ice-packed snow, All those cold years ago--when your last friend, then Had put an end to the Gabriele whom I've never known. This Friend, like yourself a Barbie Dame, became totally lame and Withdrew out the door when you needed more hands to keep Your epileptic roommate From smashing her head on the floor. Gabriele, held together by the stitching of hate-- The plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms That the factory of the human race mutantly created-- This time it will be you who shall feel the wall of artificial Fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling out. For a little maddog on top of four joints Makes a person see the unsealed human fragments That had been smoothed over in time Like a million and some bone fractures The milk of approval had swum into and covered over for looks. For me fragmenting came yesterday when I saw a welcome mat Iced over and yet I entered: Your house was hot and your oven smelled of baking meatloaf Although you had said that you could not be domesticated. And then I saw your bottle of wine Standing at attention before two glasses. The pledge that bowing to anything or anyone was wrong...that people Were only needed to gain the most bare Of physiological and psychological needs (pitstops to being human)--this was gone. Gone with your hair brushed and your skin smelling of perfume For some other man than me. Come on Gabriele, the gal that used to chew tobacco and Spit it into an empty beer can... The gal with the deep dark-ocean eyes... The maddog gal, grip that wine glass now. For Gabriele, you smile at everyone with meaning You are as together as a feather when a hurricane is in town, And when the hangover's over and your own insight has Fragmented you from a million pieces to a billion, My stiff polar bear arms Shall poke and not embrace. I sit back at this party I am hosting-- My back firmly pushing against the back of my chair, And my head and eyes cocked. You all are the performers this time... And Gabriele, you are the main attraction, Attracted, after this night, to the omni-present sense of your Smashed self; and me-- Sensitive little me in no man's land Where no man wanted to grasp me from... And no woman-- Mended back together in thy survivalistic polar bear image. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Becky's Demon "Something happened. i don't have those visions anymore." And you believe with a mind like Papa believed with When i told him i could see things Clearly before they actually Were. His back and forth pacing from those same two windows-- Which had been like a toy soldier powered on a human battery With a three minute's stand at one, and then the next, Suddenly stopped. For i was different. You anointed me And cast me out. i was alone. You caused me to hide Beside a pitchfork in the shadows of the corners of the barn. Yes. Papa stopped. His eyes moved. i'd never seen his eyes move Before. They stared down at me. My child's eyes Below--and he aimed his for them as a fisher for prey in clear waters. i backed up behind the pipe of the kitchen stove.. But with one stretch he reached his arm over Like a bear's paw that in force comes down like a Redwood. my knee aching as if broken, i crutched up From the other side of the room, beside the door.... Then, bending on my knees the next conscious second-- Feeling the blood of knee caps sticking to hay and dirt-- Seeing the sun poke like sticks through rafters and cobwebs-- Thinking i grabbed a hold on the sunlight which could Lift me Up like a rope; but grasping the pitchfork-- Raising the pitchfork-- Pitching the pitchfork-- After hearing the creaking and scraping of the opening barn door Plowing The top soil of the dry earth. Thinking: he would never kill my shadowy corner. II And in this plush chair of the Bishop's office i sit a decade And a half later--a Salem witch of the west explaining her Dull, trembling self before three Mormon men bending above me. But you don't understand me, as if anyone ever has. i had psychic abilities. But you don't want them, so they're Gone; And i'm good. i no longer believe, Bish'y, that I saw Benson Dying And Yourself rising above the Twelve. But You're still scared of me. You only want to anoint me And cast me out. You only want me to hide in a barn, And belong to shadows. You call my abilities a possession of a demon. Papa doubted i could see; and you see me as perverted. But you do see that i see... That i have something with some power. You and the Missionaries lay your hands on me... me who left my Protestant roots so as to be rooted in your Family. You put your cold hands on my forehead, Trying to vacuum out my psychic abilities, Which i tell you are no longer-- Trying to take away my saying that i'm okay... i'm good. Speak to me. Don't cast me out and leave. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Where, Oh Where, Did The Mall-Lady Go? They wanted her to drop her thoughts As naturally as her underpants fell, after they were Over the hips, so the steaming winds of her daily showers Could clear her of encroaching stain As she had been cleared away. They were a function, ignorant of their thinking, charting Charts. She felt she would have to ignore these doctors and Nurses in the mental ward. She would have to ignore the pacing patients Asking cigarettes from her. The hall was rectangular. Everyone moved rectangularly. She would go to dreams of past realities Where she was watching the shoppers' reflections As they passed mall's little fountains-- Different types of people-reflections but all silvery In the still of the waters, Happy and part of the lives of the mall. She would imagine herself sitting on a metal bench-- packages of her new clothing pulling on arms and chest Like the recalling torpor that came more easily To her lower legs; the weight of the mink that arched Her aching shoulders more like a lady; And a small sack of chocolate stars Touching her upper neck-- Wondering what packages her fellow-creatures Bought to be brought home and to whom They brought them to. And then, as the locks of solitude clicked in her consciousness, Came the wondering of where, oh where, Did the Mall-Lady go? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Savior-Searcher In The Bible-Belt I can see you in those dry moments, then As clearly as if I were there: staring at the cracks Of the white ceiling above the bedpost, wondering if You will slip down three flights to the outer darkness Like your ex-Mormon roommate, here. Your visual mind, Against your will, probably thinks about your squirm That a few moments ago squirmed you of your juice, Wiggled her skirt back on, resurfaced the lip-spit Crackup in her concrete of makeup, and wordless, Walked like a princess out the door. As the last of the ecstatic vibrations tides you in the rear You arise from the raft of the mattress. Then you cover up your nakedness, And move to the light of the living room. And then I actually see you, Don, in the hour that you had told Me to step back in. You are bending over the end-table stained In the blood of wine. Sunlight, stripped silver from the grey Clouds, pours through the window to the table. To your right a nine of swords card of a man pierced in the Back gleams as it walls the card of your future lovers., And the redness of Doctrines and Covenants to