Pulling out of his shadow You think of how you might hand This sheet to your wife Like a child presenting to his mother An award from school: Your wife screaming laughter of relief As she hugs the paper to her breast; Or how your strong hand might sweat As you pick up the receiver of the ringing phone, Expecting that after saying "Hi" That one of your college children's voices would end The conversation there For you to hand the vibrations To your wife--but instead That child Congratulates you For no longer destroying the land. The noon hour whistle Vibrates the walls Of the hollow heavens To the cab; the thermos-well Of soup, sitting on your lap, you cannot see, but You feel its stillness Stagnating and absorbing The contaminating minerals Of the tin, walling in the contents; And still you want to turn on the ignition To finish out one more complete day In the twenty-three years here Of hard work. The quandary then snaps, and you escape. When out of the valley you enter the truck And close the door-- The second time harder, and it latches. You turn the key And the truck bounces to the highway. You stop at the sign; Stop the motor while Still on the dirt road; But in the end turn left, again, Home. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Maddog (Or Death to the Barbie-Dame Image) You said that it happened--that day you ran away From a self you buried underneath the ice-packed snow, All those cold years ago--when your last friend, then Had put an end to the Gabriele whom I've never known. This Friend, like yourself a Barbie Dame, became totally lame and Withdrew out the door when you needed more hands to keep Your epileptic roommate From smashing her head on the floor. Gabriele, held together by the stitching of hate-- The plastic-eyed polar bear with the stiff arms That the factory of the human race mutantly created-- This time it will be you who shall feel the wall of artificial Fur ripped from its threads, and your stuffing falling out. For a little maddog on top of four joints Makes a person see the unsealed human fragments That had been smoothed over in time Like a million and some bone fractures The milk of approval had swum into and covered over for looks. For me fragmenting came yesterday when I saw a welcome mat Iced over and yet I entered: Your house was hot and your oven smelled of baking meatloaf Although you had said that you could not be domesticated. And then I saw your bottle of wine Standing at attention before two glasses. The pledge that bowing to anything or anyone was wrong...that people Were only needed to gain the most bare Of physiological and psychological needs (pitstops to being human)--this was gone. Gone with your hair brushed and your skin smelling of perfume For some other man than me.