She was transparent, both father figure
and Mother Superior, with their lives
sequestered in her folded hands like beads
of a rosary. After curfew, hers
were the only footsteps that were allowed
in the halls, and hers the only shadow
to ever glide across the checkered tile,
for only Mother was above the law.
While others slept or prayed, a door opened
like a wound under her touch and outside --
on the concrete slab where most nights she met
her dealer -- Mother found a naked child
in a basket. The woman looked around
and saw only the blackened skeletons
of trees in the distance, crisp autumn night
under a crescent moon, and she was glad.
Quickly she stripped, to swaddle this changeling
in her old habit -- revealing the scars,
everything from the track marks on her arms
to the line, which had not yet fully healed,
running across her belly from the rib
to what they called a woman's shame. Jealous
of her secrets, in her anxiety
she clenched; fingernails dug into her palms.
Thus blessed with the stigmata and certain
to keep her indiscretions under wraps,
she held the boy's nose and covered his mouth,
transferring the bloody prints from her palms
to his face. Writing there her confession.
And, when at last Mother let her son go,
his eyes -- as clay in her kiln -- glazed over
and hardened, no longer so innocent.
There is an insect which lays its eggs
on the ground so the larva
enters an animal through the feet
works its way to a comfortable spot
and grows
At the proper time it ruptures the skin
emerges pale and writhing
from a sore lump of flesh
and tumbles to the ground
What you do to me finds no way out
We heard you howl
as the ice breathed
a thorny wet silence,
coating the dead
trees with white jewels.
We made the decision
to forsake you by playing
scissors paper rock
and I won because
I had scissors to your
mother's paper.
We are as scared
of this new quest
as you were, yet, leaving
you behind like rancid
meat was easier than
we thought. We heard
your cuts and cries,
saw the vultures and maggots,
but looked to the North
sky with vehemence.
The world in that cloudy
distance beckoned
like an old witch
eager to show off
the old crimes
in her cooking pot.
Somewhere in that
horizon lurks bubbling
streams and meadows
aching for footpaths.
When we reach the cat tails
we will bury the red memory
of you, a funeral among
the reeds to mourn
your loss and dedicate
our new land to the wind.
"From within my rolling sanctuary,
I stalked them on the highway
in their rolling sanctuaries,"
read his best-selling memoir
A man in a convertible
with his hand up the skirt
of the woman
who was not his wife
A disheveled girl
in a sports car
yapping on her cell phone
The near-sighted geezer
in a fuming old Lincoln
with the rusted bumper
This silent movie
played out to Mozart
booming to deafening crescendo
from my Quadra speakers
"At the traffic light
I awaited a glance, horn,
high beams, the finger
to volunteer my next victim!"
I float through seas of humanity
abandoned by my courage
that fled under the comfort of conformity.
Vacant stares surround me.
Heads of acquaintances bob up and down
as I brush against their brown coats.
I push my way to nowhere
on the crowded streets of a thousand downtowns
lined with weed-infested granite.
I wipe my head with slit wrists
trying to remember a time
before everyone died.