3:15
Dorchester, MA

Raspberry-licked steel hinges follow the maw
of morning.  Who's there?
Extraterrestrial salt lick, your everyday
piano bar, fast genuflect underneath
the broom closet, janitorial supplies aisle
of prayers. Talking through clenched
teeth: am I the one? Am I the one who has to
say it see it?  Follow the breath
hired by the Secret Service not to
say anything, pocketing silence with
I'm caryatid wedge, until the ones who
seat me here undulate pink thistle
and undress their watermelon I will
keep my oath of steed unrunaway.
the law and I collide.  I tried
a filigreed detainment, a pillow project
not the hour of Mata Hari because
she had something to lose. They search
for victims, clear-cutting ground to stand
on a maimed self concept masked
and feathered, unvoted, sinks to the lowest
level and looks for something else
to eat. Anything not to be eaten. Don't
say I didn't warn you. A paleontologist's nightmare—
the disarray of dirtcodes, the destroyed
evidence and hastily remade footprints
to create a new prehistory, one in which
we never became human so they
could hold it over us like a daylight savings
account in deficit: only: only human
when I say so