Good Friday

 

In 1978, I found a man crouched inside of my borrowed tv,

building an engine that resembled Dick Cavett.

I accused him of stealing my off-hours, asked him if he

was my father or my child and he said, "No, I am just here

to eat my way out of you from within."

I turned the channel knob and he appeared in tails,

then drag, then a Broadway production of "An American In Paris"

and finally in a ridiculous purple wig that kept sliding off.

I told him he had to leave before Easter, which was

expected presently, but he clung to his mechanical Cavett

and broke for commercial before my mother arrived, complaining.

"What have you done to my tv, it has a dent in it 

and the Jesus is gone." Before she could stab me, I moved away

to a flat in Chelsea where Sappho knits booties for monsters

and I lie on the table like a place mat, serving six and howling.

_______

a second poem for the Corso word list. 

Canaan

I keep a lock on the fallboard 
to keep silence on the keys.
It's not there for kitty, but for the Destroyer, 
the Hell-spawned vaccuum-souled Imp
who leans in the doorway and pipes up
that the adagio is "nice."

Follow me to my playing place,
and I will knock you down the stairs with a spiked club. 
I do this for the sake of my instrument, 
blind and trusting in every way that I am not.

If we have just made love,
our breath as close and sweet as roosting doves,
do not think that now you may ask me to "play something."
The window is glass--you will fall two floors with the shards.

I have preserved this spare garret
through hundred-year storms and momentary bullshit
using every avenue of preservation a girl can summon.
Now, in even solitude, I free the fallboard,
set fingertips to white strikers, 
and look to kitty, in his terrible authority.

As before? I ask.
His eyes are unblinking, 
and His instrument fills like a ewer in Canaan.
________

for Sunday Muse #97.

Sebastian, You're Gonna Break My Heart

Sebastian, you're gonna break my heart
with your sandals on the stone steps looking so good
and saying the Lord's word,
but baby, there's no shortage of fools and no shortage of wood 
to make a stake to tie my Sebastian still.

Sebastian, you're gonna break my heart
cos the plague comes off the ships you meet so you can
tell 'em the Lord's word,
but baby, no one knows better than me you're just a man
who can be touched and can be killed. 

Sparrows, sparrows,
if His eye is on you, make Him look this way.
Arrows, arrows,
If He loved Sebastian like me
He wouldn't make him pay so hard, He'd stop the archery.

Sebastian, you're gonna break my heart
when they leave you there all bloody in the sun
still saying the Lord's word.
Baby, let's go back to France before this day is done
but you won't listen and you never will.

Sparrows, sparrows,
if His eye is on you, make Him look this way.
Arrows, arrows,
if He loved Sebastian like me
He wouldn't make him pay so hard, He'd stop the archery. 
_________

For Day 10. 

Sebastian was used as target practice for Roman archers as punishment for spreading the Word. He somehow survived and was rescued and nursed back to health, only to be clubbed to death later. Sebastian  is the patron saint of soldiers, athletes, and those who desire a saintly death.  

Alibi

I had a rock-solid alibi
and a gift for doubletalk and not losing the thread.
I don't do that stuff.
I'd rather not (again.)
I'd rather die.
I'm the talking dead.

Then, your eyes.
Your hand.
My carefully crafted alibi gone,
turned to sand.
______ 

for quadrille #45.