Talk to me. Just talk to me.
I’m lonely. My heart aches, or so I say.
I cry, stuck here in this money trap,
Where everything is 401(k)
And the finish line I’m desperate to cross.
No words in German. No polyglot tongue.
No archaeological treasure to unearth.
Just laughing faces and conviviality
From which I am apart,
My door slammed shut once more.Where have you been, lost boy?
I go where the mountains are bathed in grease
And the rivers stink of fried fish.
I go where the contaminants bring me
And breathe my own noxious air.
I swing on a pendulum of my own monkeylike deceit
And the ebbing features of my own mind.
I remain skillful about my own neglect,
Tarrying where the loaves were last sighted.
I am recondite and incontinent upon the wisdom pages
Of old books and am seen in strange places.
I watch movies in the dark with myself the only audience
And woogie woogie boogie all the night long.
I feed pigeons with the bread of the poor
And smile in a way so you won’t need to talk to me,
Have features you can’t find in just any tree,
And read old comics through all my waking hours.
My doorman is my father and I am his son of grief.
I call on all neighbors to help me
And they shower me with pain.
I am here where I can be,
Embodying the mass of truncate nation,
Adipose yet malnourished
As a result of your cuisine.
I consume streams and brooks
And am wild upon all the waters
Of the earth as the strange fruit
Of my master’s creation.Who is this god that regulates your regime?
My god is full of mercurial delight.
He covers continents to witness my defeat,
Leaves me neutered in some forlorn space,
And swaps stories with the landed gentry
In favoring previous centuries. My God
Lays me low with a sapping silence
In the service of his strength and is a rampage
Train roaring through a burning lake.Come to me, my child. Come to me.
When I can. When I can.
July 2003