Richard Prins
All Hallowed Out
A carbonation gnawed through my calvary last night
for I had been an inadequate mummer.
Whoever questioned my costume
got a different answer. I was Susan Sontag, Amadou Diallo
and finally Tom Waits,
who sang me squirm
on a downtown train.
Home was plundered of company. So I bought a gas station
beer and read scripture with x-ray vision,
peering through words and deeds
until I saw the bones of God and touched
myself to sleep. The ravers came crashing
under sunrise; their revelry
tasted bitterly of hops. I returned to the Hess station,
recalling trucks for Christmas.
They couldn't sell me another.
Meanwhile my palaverous ex-partner
boasted to her cabal
of pickpocketing a helpless hip-boy.
I saw my own mind starving
and lay naked on the vine-eaten hammock
to weep and shiver for God:
be my tour guide into wilderness?
He dispatched me to a tongue-tied church
after refusing me sleep like a cocktease.
It wasn't the first time He made me
cry for strangers.
for I had been an inadequate mummer.
Whoever questioned my costume
got a different answer. I was Susan Sontag, Amadou Diallo
and finally Tom Waits,
who sang me squirm
on a downtown train.
Home was plundered of company. So I bought a gas station
beer and read scripture with x-ray vision,
peering through words and deeds
until I saw the bones of God and touched
myself to sleep. The ravers came crashing
under sunrise; their revelry
tasted bitterly of hops. I returned to the Hess station,
recalling trucks for Christmas.
They couldn't sell me another.
Meanwhile my palaverous ex-partner
boasted to her cabal
of pickpocketing a helpless hip-boy.
I saw my own mind starving
and lay naked on the vine-eaten hammock
to weep and shiver for God:
be my tour guide into wilderness?
He dispatched me to a tongue-tied church
after refusing me sleep like a cocktease.
It wasn't the first time He made me
cry for strangers.
