Involuntary

"I was born here and I'll die here/against my will" --Bob Dylan

 

Borne by a yellow-black bitch and dark as a plum,

our cat tried to asphyxiate me,

but angels slipped me breaths 

disguised as fists.

I became the cellar fighter of the infant ward,

with a smile that peeled paint

and the ability to read minds.

I planted nightmares

with bone-breakers 

from the little perfect fingers of every thought.

Now, here I am on the street,

baking bricks on my tongue

and cursing up cathedrals where burger places sank.

Come to bed with me, woman,

here in the alley on my mattress barge.

I'm a woman too, under the bruises and fractures.

In the middle of the night,

my instincts will kick in and I'll thrash,

whipping and snapping like a downed wire--

I can't control it. 

I'll sorry you a dove from my prison cell. 

All I want

is to be arrested with my dogs under the Mann Act

while trying to die in the pansy garden

under the birch branches

in Michigan in the spring.

Custody can be mistaken for love. Can't it?

I'll straighten my fingers for the first time in my life,

crawl out from a crease in my target-face,

and pretend I'm some beauty

on the Mackinac Bridge

stepping over into the clean of the breeze.

_______

for both Poets Of April and An Antic Disposition at Toads.