Probation poem 12-4-17
They decorated the
probation office for Christmas:
Stockings, snowmen, Santas.
Green garland and green lights
shaped like a noose.
Stillness reigns.
Christmas pills.
Christmas black eyes.
No baying yet.
I can’t write a poem without baying,
so I won’t.
I’ve got Walt with me.
Was Walt into Christmas?
I bet he wielded his eel spear
to bring home eel
for Christmas dinner.
What would Walt make
of his country today?
Of course he’d be in prison,
doing what he implied
in Leaves of Grass.
Walt was always singing
praises for America.
Can you sing like that
for America anymore?
You can certainly bay.
We assemble around the table.
A new man
already in the act of disappearing.
I hear Americans gently baying:
I can’t go to church.
I can’t ride horses?
I can’t go see cattle with my dad?
I have to live in a stable.
I want to use so bad.
I need a job.
I can’t take a welding class?
I can’t live near a bus stop?
I can’t go to AA seven days a week.
I live in a culvert.
I can’t burn but I can take pills?
I spent the night on the roof.
I’m becoming more sallow.
Sallow!
A man said sallow.
I heard it.
He was wearing
a greasy brown hoodie
with the hood on.
I could barely see his face
(and it was sallow),
but I heard sallow
and I listened.
There is a difference.
I’m hearing
Americans baying
in this soundproof studio
and I’m recording it,
mixing, (no over dubbing),
producing an album
of an undetermined
musical genre
that somehow
I must release
because Americans need
to hear their
fellow Americans bay.