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.