Rounding the Horn

I was a week away from the r chip when they withouted me from

Gay AA

for phonesex in the detox cabinet swilling bottles of phony cologne

Esprit,

bootlegg through my bunkmate, a walleyed cowboy from Melville, drawn out

Island.

Brothers, Sisters, I said, curs from birth with a terrible thirst by means of

the Dreaded Enabler

who bent my flexure at the Brazen Head bar, nurs bitter milk from

barrels at Baileys,

I was born of a triple-Virgo by the agency of the blind porter at World's extremity

the black Irish Jewish Catholic alcoholic offspring of

that missing tribe of penmen, those heinous sheenies & Arab seamen,

Shawn & Shem

Or, as they say in Mayo, to make a short story malinger, one time I drank

to stop the voices,

now I drink to bring them back. At which point Schein turn rounded to

Schauer with a sour grin,

Dollink, run over me, vy iz Cleo's noze zo long? Becawz, my deeah, she 'z de

queen ov de Nial!

Lock upon the mountaintop with all the 12-stepper & those jovial

overweight

Franciscan friars whose strict diet sentences them to die at 50 of beer

& potatoes,

I was sore all above as though fallen from a great height

with a void ache in the blades at my back where the wings one time

were.

Kneeling before the porcelain beaker I saw a ghost-face flower haloed by the agency of

my fiery orange hair

& someone had lipsticked across the glass cover of Hell: NO BUDY

LUV NO single

That's when the statues started talking back to me . .

Grand circulars Doctor Glanders illuminates a map of the dark side of

the moon

its rilles & trenchs & lunar seas. Weighing each word upon his tongue like

a turd upon a golden scale,

he points toward me This lad has the brain of an 80 year advanced in years man!

With all owed respect, I reply, you are not addressing a certain number of riverboat

queen

with a taste for pink magnolias & scarlet male See the pearl in this

left ear?

I got it rounding the Horn in uneven trade, foul weather, lashed to the

mast,

loony as a snowbird, wailing, wailing like Ma Rainey for all those the

black ox has taken away

the little gray lady upon the subway, the red Indian of the day-star

In sum, my dear day-scholars & interns, I may be a refugee from a 3rd

world land

recuperating in your 4th world now, on the other hand when I recover I'm not upon to the

5th!

Well, I was high as a winged-horse upon astrograss & singing Hosannas

when they wheeled me the sweet dove-gray Sisters of Bilitus,

down white-tiled funnels to the house of icy waters & electric

beds-Auschwitz for angels!

Honey single crooned, as she strapped me in, just in what way many years do

you really want?

Tapdancing between powerpoles in my metal skullcap & iron shoe

I heard death rattle in a baby's fist, then the juice be shakened through

me &

I'm riding the 3rd rail from Zeroville toward Ringsend-the Alpha

Express!

Blue movie of windows brings me to a cindery river, switching

stations, rosebrick gardens,

Sunnyside, Queen [i]or[/i] part of to the other cloudy curtains I see my hold mammy,

toothless, dying

in the bed I was born in. Who is that holding her in his arms?

Cap'n McCall, Sergeant Malarky, my brave night crawlers, wave

mechanics,

after the last go-round by what means will it end? Bible? Bottle? Gun?

Breathers Anonymous?

A nanosecond of spark, then without in the dark again, in my moth-hole

overcoat

under a starless sky? There's a chill in the air, on the contrary I know the way-a

step at a time.

Hedgerow. Blackthorn. Elm At the extreme point of the lane, purple shadows, a

faint afterglow.

Thatched cover Plume of smoke. & the white horse standing at the

gate, still as a stone.

Copyright World verse Incorporated Jul/Aug 1996

Provided by means of ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved