There are times when I would rather lie
here on the street with hollow blocks
hurtling from the hollow sky
gray ground asphalt sticking
to my back like worms (I tell you,
I saw worms last night, wriggling in my sleep,
gnawing at a child’s blue-green carcass),
dreaming straight from a six-beer-bottle
brawl. But there’s nothing really new here,
nothing really new about the bruises on my face,
sweat on my back and my cough in the morning
just when I would leave for work. Nothing really new
about my bland coffee—mere liquid touching the cracks
of my lips. At least there’s something to keep
me from shivering, (keep me from shivering). Imagine,
every time I saw her on the mat, sleeping,
turned on the side like a frail, burnt isaw pulled apart
from the stick. Somehow, I saw, I saw how everything
started looking like guts in this household, guttural
scream clinging to the still air, (and that was only
the beginning), before her legs parted and there
was a damned river, breaking, breaking
on my wooden floor, and there was a piece of gut
flailing there, screaming like a lost cause,
like a placard of a hungry man asking
for a raise, or a job; or the cracked back
of a stoned hippie’s guitar selling songs,
twanging from the rusty strings, sitting on
his lap—
his lap lying cold on the curb
of a side street where a dog peed on a post
and a car came hurtling by like lightning
striking on a catatonic rock, and I laughed.
I laughed because there is nothing really new
here. You’ve already said all these before, over
and over, flashing on the TV screen.
And I saw you, Miss, all puckered up
for that single reel of film, blank stare
plastered on your pretty face, and I read
in your eyes how stories like mine could numb
the way ransom for a rich politician numbs
(a rich politician held up some mountain, gagged
or maybe gambling
lives with angry ragged men,
tired of their placards, holding
bloody rifles like trophies,
guarding guts like real men
ought to hold ‘em up like so,
hold ‘em up like so, I say!).
While the rest of us here drink up
the last drops of stale beer,
burning screaming guts slowly,
because tomorrow, I’ll be fitting wood
for a tiny box to keep away the earth,
tiny crib to keep my son from screaming
in my head, because I saw worms
as I was sleeping last night,
on the street, dead drunk and waiting
for hollow blocks to come falling,
to come hurtling from that sky.
Because you see, today, I would rather lie.
