Collage with Train Trip Memories and Laundry

Down in the basement, jacked on Kimbo,

I’m screwdriving chunks of OxiClean

into the washer.

Jane: Collage is tattered backdrop,

not worth the Time nor Money.

But: How else to represent /

embody/ break the mad scream

of the interior

running thru the mind’s empty halls?

Time is alive and dead.

Scaffolds of electrical poles

a weedy berm decked out

in a long, pale condom —

ghost of a penis. And brusquely

gaunt thoughts clamber up

over the tracks, thru fog, past Westy’s Smart-Market,

past an Impala up to its armpits

in floodwater —

all the furniture of landscape

that trains put in the way

to impede all those gaunt haunters who hunt me —

useless/of no avail.

A landscape harrowed by havoc.

The timer buzzes dizzily like bees in a Coke bottle.

It’s 1 o’clock. I’m zealously medicated.

Hits of Xanax (the nothing that is)

and Amphetamines (house with the light on, Eye of God) but

I Am An Atheist I manically announced

to MFAs and indigenous Tuscaloosans —

oil tanker, swing set, silo, propane, the train slows on the upgrade —

smooth, and on its way to — heaven.

A diaphanous fog of adjectives overcomes me.

Jane says: I can’t believe you said that in Alabama.

Nothing stands in the way of my recklessness.

Notes:

Quotations in this poem are thanks to Jan Beatty and Sharon Dolin.

Source: Poetry (May 2017)