Real

 

You write:

Perhaps you like to think you start with wood.

Perhaps you start with wood and then you chisel the eyes,

wide enough for detail, but narrow cornered, so as not to take in too much

light.

Then a nose, for specific scents only.

Two secret lips that might speak.

You want the wood to live and breathe; you want it real.

 

Perhaps you think the magic dust that makes it real is vodka or cocaine.

Maybe you think it's speed or Xanax or sex with strangers.

Or  maybe it's the cigarettes or the angle the light hits the wall across

from  you.

 

And maybe it is sex with strangers.

But maybe it is sex with yourself.

Maybe the poem is sex and you are the stranger.

Maybe the poem is stranger than you.

Maybe the poem is real.

Maybe the poem is more real than the event it recalls.

Maybe the event the poem is based on only feels real on the page, as a poem.

 

Maybe that's when you realize that your life is the wood

and you and your psychiatrist have

very different ideas

about

what makes wood real. 

 

In Praise of Funny Socks

 

Nobody ever dies in funny socks.

Sure, a clown somewhere,

clobbered by a giant rubber daisy

came to his end

in red floppy oversized shoes.

 

Funny socks are a safety measure,

I told myself,

on amphetamine-amped nights

alone in the dark,

hugging pillow to chest,

heart pounding through the bedsprings.

 

Perhaps tomorrow

the last-breath tango

in sparkling stilettos,

lips red and moist as a fresh wound.

But not a solo trembling footnote-death.

So I'd stretch icy feet into the

funniest socks I could find.

 

Still, some nights,

walking alone on city streets,

perceiving  sinister footsteps behind me

my heart pounding into purse straps,

I imagine my feet striding in

fuzzy rainbow toe-sock-steps

and somehow feel safe.