Futile Efforts (58 page)

in the lapping ripples of our leaking lives

DRIVING THROUGH THE HEART OF KANSAS,

KANSAS DRIVEN THROUGH MY HEART

Holy shit, we really are in goddamn Kansas, Toto

we've been brought here kicking by the sneers of

our hustling peers, the girls who couldn't remember

how to pronounce our last names, going Pica
Pickeri
Pikkeel

when the bed was liquid with

passionless flames, the best friends

who stole our cars and mowed down our haunting lusts

in unbuckled fits to fuck our women,

the swine begging money to buy condoms and Vaseline

and pink light bulbs and six dollar wine, the bosses

who pushed our arms down into grease

and swill and acid and intestines every day,

the teachers who red-penned our barely conceived dreams

and held our heads beneath the rusted wheels of reality,

the nuns who grew too jealous of God and worked

the will of Christ across our asses

We've

been cast out of Nod and flung from Central Park West

into the corn fields of dull fiends who carry scythes

to the barn dance and cleave through the dirty overalls

of dainty necks and tattooed purgatory

We'll bark in the darkness and terrorize

the coy moon

gnawing bones of regret, raging against chew toys,

casting runes at the feet of blind muses

drawing a bead on our foes

doing all that we knew we could and would

good boy, Toto, good boy good boy good boy good boy good

She's been sitting there by the swings staring at me

for the last three hours

one of us waiting for the brute to break free

she's got the kind of gaze that can cut a chest deep enough

to spot it inside, coiled beneath the muscle

of my church volunteer work,

tissue of donations, bone of my good boy intentions

visiting the children's leukemia wards

crying each week for the bald kids who've died

We're almost there, we're getting there

she's got the right bait out now as she closes her eyes to the sun

tilting her jaw to the perfect angle, vaguest hint of a grin

once I stand up we'll be on our way

on the run, she won't even need to flick a wrist

or cock a finger

to show me which direction to go

she'll have a husband she wants done in, a boss

without the proper respect for her ass and her raises, a mother

who eats too much yogurt to die by the calendar

Once they're all gone, left out here maybe, afterwards,

one hanging in each swing

and there's only her and the nothing

inside me let loose

believe me, when the smiles are affixed and the scotch poured,

her fingers stroking my hair, the popgun .22 in her laughing hand,

neck the scent of a rose

and we go in for that first kiss, and finally, at last

we're nose to nose, and she visits the face she could see

but did not meet in me before

we're there

as her gun is slapped to the floor

and we have all day and night to play

and in the morning, you bet, she'll choose the noose

Look where I'm pointing

up there beyond the bridge where the yellow eyes

of my uncles light the cigar shops

while they smoke and demean the prophets,

and talk of butchers on Queen's Boulevard

and in Buchenwald, Mussolini

my two grandmothers are buried in the same grave

with one of the granddad's, it was cheaper, the cemetery

just down the block over the train tracks, make a right

the man is sandwiched, they used to joke about jealousy

and paying visits, passing Amaretto back and forth

sometimes dressed in gray, sometimes white,

still hunched over from the sweatshops

I've been watching them for weeks

in the mist, the rain, kicking sleet from my feet

wondering why they don't get a move on

all of us just grinning and leering until dawn

I used to feel wet towels on my forehead

spoonfuls of soup on my chin

where will they put me, once I'm out of here

maybe I can fit in with them, push aside the dust

ask the ashes if it would be fine

laying there for all times, with this much empty room

we can all make it in, my mother, my cousins,

three aunts, my brother and his kids, the goldfish,

my sister and her nurses, dig up Dad and bring him on over,

the cat with bad kidneys, grab the milkman too

lots of magazines and small talk to pass the time

You can see the unnamed saints laughing on the walls

Christ with that look in his eye

reviling the livings, staring back

slipping off their skins and running, wet and peeled

it's a party, a family reunion

who the fuck brought the Liberace records?

maybe they won't let me in, my guts not good enough

too much disdain and not enough real pain

no whining allowed, the cat just took a piss

I was always afraid I didn't have enough soul

to match their lives, the thickness of their arms

and hides

and get down into the same hole

go, go and sit in a cemetery without any tombstones

it's easy to show your teeth

when you haven't any lips, too hurt in the dirt

at home all alone in potter's field