ROAMING CHARGES

Across a prairie
In a cushioned doctor’s office
From the bottom of a chlorinated swimming pool

Waiting for your voice to come back

SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAVELING

(Part One)

I am convinced certain things need to be said,
or maybe they’ve been said already, or maybe they’re being said right now.
I am convinced many bodies are at work in the wires we cross to reach one another,
and with every click of the receiver
a blood vessel opens to let our voices through.

I am convinced the delicious red flesh
of the central wire (which holds our most important pulse) is really the long tongue of history’s deceased, which we must
borrow, just to say,

“I love you.”
or
“Fuck you.”
or
“I’ll be home late tonight.”

And when we plunge ourselves into the darkened places
to hear our voices flap as gulls or crows do
against a storm, we must feel strained
(in a sympathetic way) by the barriers
those wings now fight against.

SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAVELING

(Part Two)

And when you talk hurriedly to a friend late at night
from a pay phone, and the voice of that man
(one of the most frightening men I have ever met,
though not face-to-face) enters our conversation
to tell us with his cheerful hint of menace:

“Excuse me, Please deposit 25 cents for the next one minute…
or your call….will be automatically…disconnected…”
Is this the voice of the boat man
who we must pay to get to the other side?
He rises from the mist between our clamped eardrums,
taking us through the length of these smaller journeys
our restless change could buy.

UNHOLY CUP

There goes Apostle Bob’s Abomination Truck--
I’m still waiting for that unholy cup.
I’m way past due, I’m way past tense.
I skinned the village idiot to get his two cents.
I’m itching for a signal that I can trust, but now I’m the one breaking up…

“OUT, OUT, DAMN SPOT!”
(THE GAME SHOW)

I wouldn’t speak that way to me if I were you.
No, almost definitely, I would not. But then, if I were you,
I most likely would not speak at all, but curl up, fetus-like
in the corner, stricken with the ineptitude of God’s financing
in areas such as creation and genetic inheritance. And if I
were doing this, and I were you, who would you be?

Lost in the shuffle, that’s who; a blank spot, a shadow figure,
a dawn-day silhouette no one would be willing to step into.
And yes, all the crustaceans would curl up their tails in salute,
and the tad poles would do a slow dive backwards into
the sperm pool, and it would all be like some old
Esther Williams swim-&-dance routine;
A celebrity roast to the blind force of evolution.

Up to the podium walks a man we’ve never seen before,
and he would ask, “The envelope, please…” and your name
would be on it, announced to the crowd, the camera crews
searching you out, the spotlight frantic, and we would all
fall down the open keyhole of your identity, spiraling down
like a DNA chain, holding hands, not knowing whose hands
we’re holding, partners for eternity, like Groucho & Marx,
like Karl & Engels, like Fish & Chips, tumbling, deposited,
as safe as a rerun, as two lovers—each with their finger
in a socket—stretching across the long room
to meet in a kiss.

DEFUNCT KING

Today, I needed to talk to my father
and I had to go forty miles to do this,
and it only cost a few slim quarters
down the pay phone’s throat.
Me, a little lighter in my pockets,
and my legs no more tired for it.
“Kill the Messenger,” they used to say. Well, now the messenger can keep his distance,
but there are still ways to drip poison down the ear of a king just turned defunct.

HORSES

So, who was that ferocious god we answered to, who lay buried
in the coarse thicket of our pubic hair, in swigged beer and the serum
of our guilty sweat? He was our outpost of dog fur, our immaculate
boner, he was radiant. He ran through flaming sewer gutters,
exploded mail boxes, all juvenile pranks while our bodies burned
with tides we had no name for. We were wired to his spine,
we knew his dance which set us running, but we could not
speak to him. The power plant hummed at the edge
of the neatly combed lawn, which was green in a way
that whispered green even in the gathered dark.
And our shadows galloped like mad horses, afraid
their own muscles could tear them apart.