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From the Garden
The shadow boys are
breaking all the laws.
Tom Waits
The flowers were sulking in their sensitive beds
as if they couldn't bear a moment without praise,
and the shadow boys were feeling undefined,
just a bunch of gray guys on a cold, gray day.
Elsewhere orchids in their hot, glass houses
smugly opened and preened, their privilege
the kind a shadow boy in his prime
might have addressed with a switchblade.
I was out among the slugs, watching them leave
their trademark traces of slime. From the garden
it seemed there wasn't a place I couldn't be,
a thing I couldn't imagine. What a good day,
I thought, for ugliness to have its revenge,
for worms to be given a corpse.
Once, before I learned what I wasn't, I lingered
on street corners in my black and gold satin jacket
looking for a grievance-a small time innocent
unaware that grievances come unbidden.
Now I wanted to go inside where it was lamp-lit,
warm, everything artificial and mine.
I took off my muddy shoes, turned the burner on
under the teapot, waited for it to call me
as if it were something hurt or wild. It did.
With just a touch, I made it subside.