I wish I could tell you how deep
the suck goes,
how dark it is and holy,
its tragedies siloed. They dot
the landscape, with oxen, mud-hooved,
and crows.
Shakespearean but boiled-down,
a thick gravy, oversalted,
served on white bread, day-old,
sold cheap at the bakery outlet.
It broods on the woodland edge,
morbidly forested and bottle green,
fermented in swamp, dung, skunk,
and bridled by sorcery, potions,
Bible school puppetry, ogres, fairies,
poorly rendered papier-mâché
good and bad Samaritans.
Kept awake by raw, honest terrors,
eviction dreams, half-conscious
fantasies of terrible mothers wielding
hatchets, but oddly
free, like a free lunch is free,
or a vacant lot, or a stinkweed
bouquet. Just sit with it as you’d sit
with a legless drunk
who won’t shut up about the bygone.
Don’t bring your sobriety narratives
to this bedside, Diane.
Be drunk … it’s the only way, raved
Baudelaire, corkscrewed
through and through with syphilis.
How artless, this source
of art, this shit show where
the greenest
watercress grows.
