this poem is like a television show,
you don't need to know anything to understand it,
it is your uncle laughing while the dancers fall
in limelight tragedy and your mother not listening
when you tell her you were only sleeping.

this poem is so sure of itself,
cock-eyed braggart with a cigar in its mouth
and wearing one of those stupid hats from the
late 1940's that men used to wear to the office.
it is telling you with gin-sweet breath
that you will not amount to anything if you
do not do anything, it is the voice of your
drunk father beating on your door and asking
to borrow your pornography magazines

this poem is insecure;
it puts up a front of adult proclivities
with words like 'proclivities' while wetting
itself in the corner like a derelict,
this poem tried to hide its dunce cap beneath
a toupee and tried to hide its ignorance by
being loud, and inspite of itself, allowed
you to hear the intelligent whispers of the
peach-splattered clouds as they rushed over
the herring-bone of Lighthouse point, neither
threatening nor promising rain, just burgeoning
like another paranoid night before you, wrapping
around the curve of your arc with blankets of
darkness, whimpering.

this poem is not a poem,
it is a chariot for lightning cast out of the heavens
by a baleful god, the one who created landlords and
voted against Spring, the one who called you on the
phone in robot voice to inform you that your credit card
had expired, the god who gave you the guitar and ten fingers
but not music. Now the chariot brings you a rent check,
damp cherry blossoms, a new credit card, and the recording
of the first rock and roll song sounding like a burning tin can.

so seat yourself in your decision of what this is
while the audience clamors for the curtains to be lowered,
while Fifth Violinist imagines he can play drunk,
while the poet slams his hand in the silverware drawer
and has to write for a month with his left hand,
while the old songs wind across the jib of salted sailing ships
and reach you at walking pace from across the hidden sea:

You are allowed to begin.