(By Mike Anderson)
I lay down my robe, and the sea was hungry
My skin was cold in the angry shade
The children there were not my enemies
I bought apartments there on the corner of Knife and Handle
The alleys, the bars, the long highways
My automobile rusted by the river
And the water there was not my enemy
I have a brother who drowned in the Gulf of Mexico
So I hiked a hitch with a blandly mother
I’m a youthful stranger, unlike your other
The exits there were not the end of me
Drunk in my jacket, I sold them insurance
Son have you heard the hermit in the mountains?
His sunflower unholy battered soul
What more could I name, what more could I name?
Grime skin mad black things spiked his eyes
I said, “Sir, that man is not my enemy.”
And the pigeon pots on the window sill wilted down with fear
I lifted a knife in the house of love
Like a child catholic throws a dove
And the death that comes from your enemy
Plays sweet sad music like a horse head sings Sinatra
“You think you’re a big kind of dreamer?!”
Moon moon moon and a million lives!
The circus of forms that you send to me
I stove away under the stool of my piano
Long melancholy of long-legged Mary
Tried to scratch out the moons decaying gloom
Watching the late show with a cigarette in the room
The station close projects a shimmer on her skin
On an elevator 100 miles away
Squirts insulin in a fistful of his skin
The sugars there were not his enemies
Apples in ice-cream: a perfume to his soul
