A Brooklyn dialysis center in red brick and blue awning
On a sunny day in a clear sky way
With Dean Street black and bright sidewalks wide cream.

The hurt that coats everything like heavy paint
is dripping down the sides and spilling
around the edges, filling in, gumming up, stopping down.

What is left? What can yet be won from this table?
The cards fell after the gunshot blew
They scattered and splattered blood gelled the scene.

I’m not the man I promised I’d be.
I’m the creature soaked in black goo
from the swamp where the vegetation stinks
together into this oily sludge coat
that we lurking beasties wear
and of which we alltimes stink.

I’m not the man I told my parents about
when I stood tall and chipper
talking over the rail of my clean
and proper wooden crib.
I’m the flying lizard with the open throat
who screeches mindlessly into a fading age.
I don’t know how some one so big and bulky
so lopsided and ungainly
managed to sweep the sky with great
but paper-thin and bone-bound wings.
Maybe the atmosphere was different then,
the rules easier,
the game bent towards me.

Forgive us as the white strewn soft long
clouds shift their spots, making the Jan day
now bright as summer, now soft as autumn.
Forgive us anyway,
though it is common knowledge that you needn’t bother
with us anymore, now you’ve grown stronger,
now you’ve moved on to better things,
now you’ve found your miraculous heart past the end of us.
Ah but doesn’t that make it just the right time
to double back ’round and accept us
for what we ended up becoming, staying, holding steady as?

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear heart,
oh my gosh, who can say what it’s all about?
I’m so sorry and please excuse me
while I go grab a seltzer.
I’ve believe with a few bubbly dabs
your red dress will sing as bright and true
as when you entered this party, ruffling as you came.

Just a moment, oh give me but a sec,
I’ll make it all right.
I usually don’t move so quick and unthought
I’m normally precise and kindly cool.
It must be the drink, though of course I’m
holding myself to a reasonable pace
and I’m drinking only the softest beers
and gentlest wines, keeping free of spirits,
breaking this party calmly like a master chef
treating tge last egg of the souffle,
oh gosh, I’ve really made an effort here!

I asked you to come here to come here to help out I specifically asked you to get down here to help me out to make this OK I said please and I directed my comments respectfully I was completely in line and only asked for what was reasonable for one such as me in my position and given my circumstances to ask for to ask of you given what you are to us and how you arrange yourself and how that arrangement gave rise to the flowering in the soft dirt and the many shapes and moving forms that people the inscrutable seas which are deeper than my veins and wider than my wildest dreams being but a man constricted by a time and within a certain range of space, like a cow on the state lands on the grazing lands that are big but eventually bound by barbed wire and the rattling old pickups that carry callus-hands families to church and the store and school and the store where the Mrs works and the gas station where the Mr lends his sturdy hands.

Come back around if you would if you please if you could. I cannot keep it up like this all day long. All alone here with the curving metal channels and the wind farms that look like a million naked prop planes one-eyeing all over this dusty leathery brown-grassed hilly land where I came without papers from another state in the union where I was born with the smallest dollops of sinful pride. I’ve got big ideas! The world is wide open!

AMW/BW