MICHIGAN

We said we’d give them a lesson in uncompromising and relentless recklessness

We’d strip off our shirts and our rosary necklaces

We wouldn’t be ashamed of bodies or ask for frecklelessness

We wouldn’t fit ourselves in three-walled receptacles

We wouldn’t be happy with lives imperceptible

We wouldn’t let our eyes grow tired and un-skeptical

And most important, we wouldn’t settle for being merely acceptable

But exceptional, loud spectacles, not susceptible to inevitable

But shining spears of something seminal

It wouldn’t matter if it was criminal

As long as our thoughts weren’t subliminal

And our seen flaws were merely minimal

Because, baby, back then we were animals

Cow flesh boots with the tan of ten camels

Our teeth gnawing down our parents’ prepaid enamel

Kisses emblazoned with a beer breath flammable.

-

But look at us now, baby, look at us now:

-

I cover up my calf tattoos with gold-toes and oxfords

Cheap ones from TJ Maxx and man, do I look awkward

I try to keep my mouth shut, and  hold back those locked words

Even with an outfit so normal, I manage to feel so absurd

Like a gold-plated turd or a mockingbird

Mocking a roadkill pigeon with just a smidgen

Of ketchup on the corner of its beak.

And its so frustrating because I feel so weak

At this stage in my life I seek

For something I reasoned was better than our dancing in speakeasy boutiques

Messy halls with Victorian-style freaks

The bitter early-lesbian with an Iggy-Pop physique

The solitary programmer who spends his cash on lonely tweaks

Desperately wearing a flag of a Star Trek shirt, looking for other geeks

Not that we were any cooler, we just didn’t let that side shriek

Cause we were meek freaks with mystique in a bleak bar that reeked like Mozambique.

-

But we assumed that because we weren’t a bourgeoisies

That we knew something about being free

From a system, a brainwashed culture, a cult of banshees

But we were just the debris of society

For the people who had legitimate dreams and weren’t just “rough” and “artsy”

Who didn’t just take Polaroids of friendless trees

But designed things, volunteered, and didn’t make their good deeds decreed

They lived and we reported, they played while we recorded

They spoke while we retorted,

And man… those comebacks weren’t clever

But the worst thing that we did was when we sadly resorted

To those jobs we needed to keep our windows un-boarded

And our illusion of life-loving was sucked away, snorted

By some unseen god-junkie, an experimental Lord-kid

Who had enough of this game of Bohemia

And liked the concept of necrophilia

And had our fading souls love one another until it near killed ya

And you left with my money, my stash, and a map of Slovenia.

-

I realized then how our lives were constructed on a foundation of pure fantasy,

And all the Salvatore novels in the world couldn’t support the house we built:

A ramshackle home raised and razed on the hallucinations that we thought we shared.

-

When you left it burned like bad cider but I can’t really blame you one bit

Living in Detroit was like being a peasant in a plantation that sowed shit

Two punks in ’88, living a life we were too pompous to quit

It was hard baby, being plain-dwelling Gypsies in a Midwest that wouldn’t fit

But you popped off this place so simply, like a zit

Or a terrible-two tyke having a fit

But it’s fair enough, your nomadic fingers wouldn’t commit

To the cavers’ keyboard that wouldn’t permit

You to scream all the spontaneity you wanted to emit

And yes, yes, yes, I know, it can stick you like a mucus pit

Impossible to escape, like climbing with your wrists

But baby, that’s only if you keep drooling the spit

That entombs your cubicle like Tiger’s mitt

-

I tried to keep you from letting it happen

But you kept trying to make the noise of one hand clapping

Deafening your eardrums with the percussion of your frustration

And calculating your future in beat to your own underestimations.

And it hurt to watch you gnaw on your own feathers,

But would you have wanted me to cowl your head in leather?

I knew you had to fly, so I let you cut your tether,

But I thought you’d look back, at least once for good measure,

But I guess an idealist and a working man can’t dance together,

At least not if the one with greasy feet is trying to lead.

-

I dunno where you are now, baby, but I hope you’re domestic

A wounded rotting hippie without antiseptic

And I hate the fact I’m an automaton, as well

But at least I admit it, and didn’t run at the sight of hell

But plunged into it looking for an elevator up

And if you never walk through the flames, then the magma will keep you stuck

So live in your montage reel of rides in flatbed trucks

But until you grow up and keep your shirt tucked

Your nothing-searching soul is clipwing sitting duck.

-

You can still be wonderful and weird and extravagant

But you don’t need to not contribute to have it

So make a difference, don’t portray yourself significant

Realize your smallness, your worthlessness,

Your beauty, your old mind’s thoroughness,

And take pride in that the fact you’re an urgent mess

Because yes, baby, we’re all insignificant

But at your most mundane I found you magnificent.

And if you ever think you’d like to live a human’s life again,

Make up for Narcissus’ sins,

Or consider having a wiser next-of-kin…

I could really use you back in Michigan.

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Performed and published with Busboys & Poets.