A Poem For You

 This poem has escaped from the madhouse,

pushed its handprints into wet cement.

This poem is the unwanted child

whose father tried to murder it

and whose mother is the transcendent goddess

who never spoke.

This poem is the banquet

with no main course,

the after glow of a dead star,

the boundary line that once described a house.

This poem was found on a beach

in a bottle,

written in rum and turtle blood.

This poem is a prank on its author,

played on him by his pen.

This poem should be sung from barricades

at thoughtless fascists,

daubed on prison roofs

for news choppers to broadcast.

This poem should be chewed into a wad

and used to pack a gunshot wound.

This poem should be whispered by lovers

onto each others’ engorged genitals.

This poem should be carved in enormous Braille

on the white cliffs of Dover.

This poem should be read

one hundred and fourteen times

over a period of twenty seven years

and then forgotten forever.

This poem is boring.

This poem is incandescently brilliant.

This poem is a microscopic view

of a molecule of ink.

This poem is a naval flare

sent up at the apocalypse,

illuminating the city of the dead.

This poem is a seed I am planting

in your heart that you can grow

however you like.

This poem won’t stop loving you

even if you hate it.

This poem should have contained rhyme

and rhythm

to be more easily sung by road diggers

and in church.

This poem is a long list of stupid remarks

that you should arrange

in whatever order you find most satisfying.

This poem is attempting

to shrink the distance

between you and me to zero

for one frozen, beautiful moment

of absolute sincerity and say

“I see you. I relate to you

and I feel kinship with you

and I think you are worthwhile

and beautiful and I love you”

so that for a moment

the cruel gravities of the universe

will lift from us.

This poem is a collection

of the words that lay,

on this train journey,

between me and

everything else.