from Michael J. Menges
---
1979 A.D.
by my psychiatrist
Like mules (no, not asses) of clay-house desert times
Stamping grapes into wine, I wearily and free-will-lessly move paper
And stamp my dreams and dignity deep underfoot while a
Crimson-purple face barks out obscenities as if I were an
Ass and he the wagonmaster. The load (workload, that is) is too heavy and
Feed and barn too little for my collapsing strength.
Restaurant grease and a hotel closet hurt and oppress my elbow-room need and
Hurtle me trudging to the Club to act and feel my muscles’ power for me alone, not for
that shithead.
Girls fast as cheetahs dashing for deer fattened up by the Pharaoh,
Shying away from hide-worn (like my wallet) mules like me,
Richly dress in royal gaudy trappings and talking in gaudy rich voices,
Clothes strolling couples communicate in Tower-of-Bable words and in
Comic-strip balloons that pop at my understanding attempts,
I, in my faded holey shreds am watching plays and performances
In dialects I cannot grasp, so on to the club for that which I can grasp.
Trudging back I transmute to invisible lizard from an eons-aged star,
Seeing creatures from another orb prepare for mating with
Left hooks and right jabs, sabred thrusts and counterthrusts
From language and posture and gesture, and I imagine my fellow and feline
Lizards, without all distraction, hostile and relating-destructive or vain and strutting,
and wriggling and swaggering,
Look speechless with tongues only jumping as signal and then mate,
All words that suck emotion and joyous anticipating heartbeat all disappeared.
Poor boss! So much blood-torment overflowing under his skin;
The dikes of his nerves must have swept away Poor boss!!
At overtime tonight I will give him a tranquilizer pellet
To help him bring in the weekend and he can ring out the old,
And I will bring in the new.
Those nags and insults and disgust-contempt-tones in his voice,
Aimed seemingly at me but springing, I know, from his sympatheable rage,
(and I should feel with compassion so the earthlings tell me),
Will be silenced. The gun club sells excellent silencers,
And his problem of excess blood will be solved by a drainage canal the pellet will make.
Between two pueblos lies the slave auction, Nevada meeting Athens,
Across the barking iron-housed-chariot path stands a
Burned out 3-level-caved mountain-like me but I am not insured.
The top caveroom will be a perfect observation for me to watch the
Earthlings from the YMCA and Girls’ Club bid for bodies at the neighborhood bar
While the auctioneers serve the liquid advertisements. The sight from my telescope is
adequate, but
Closer inspection from my lizard superiors is demanded to gauge the life form’s habits,
So I launch my own miniature satellites to penetrate the smoggy atmosphere,
Small round cylindrical satellites
From the National Rifle Club’s collection of miniature Cape Canaveral sets.
To mix cake batter is so strenuous,
To spin the guts and head to
suicide is also taxing,
We pay taxes for the police so
let them serve me--do an
electric mixer job with more efficiency.
When I fly, last-laughingly,
to report, not to superiors (my shrink says they are delusional and hallucinatory but what does he know? That’s why I fired him. I haven’t taken his pills in weeks)
But to God, or void, I’ll say,
“Cart to auto, cave to mansion,
Progress has changed but roots of
Discontent, rebellion, power, pain, and
suffering have not been altered.”
