Special Needs
Only the skin runs ahead like a spruced-up
dream from which I never awake.
What really exists, no one knows.
In exchange for shook foil,
Hopkins killed the agnostic in him.
I want to kill the polygamist in me.
A sound, a whole sound is never a separation.
A whole sound is an angelic order.
I am most whole in an alley off Market Street
where I pretend to be a sentence
and not a sentiment, like a friend to stray
cats and beautiful women. My young cousins only want
hard words and money. If the economy sinks, they will
kill you quicker than a brainwave.
I give my sympathy to the last evangelical.
As long as the body is blaring,
we avoid the straitjackets of conformity.
I am zealous for the taste of my life.
Sometime, I do not sleep for days.
In the mornings, I rub my hands together
back and forth summoning the angels
away from the orthodoxy of facades.
I reach for the peppershaker
on my spice rack and recall all the pimps
of Chelsea and all the Johns on Wall Street.
I see joggers in the street and they remind me
of my most treasured liaisons.
Some men are simply malefic and fall
through your window, wanting to be a part
of something good.
Floating Wolf
