Who’d arrived at their splendid idea
Of inviting me to a winking chat?

“We’re crows, man,” one shined as he chewed the fat.
"We three be from the same place, ain't square,

And, like, takes things in strides the others lack
Knowin’ we take. We’s old-school crows.

You know what I’m talkin’ ‘bout.” Laugh. Laugh.
Here’s describing two crisscrossed sons of slaves

Who were sons of warriors or just sons
Of just some poor single moms raising kids

As best they could alone. I’m not laughing
And not likely to wink at slaving

That after over a decade, its umpteenth revision,
And my eyeing its potholes, was still sophomoric,
Cagey, and subtitled as the reconstructed answers
To a survey question said to have been put to ten
Condemned men (changed to read, ten persons).

The question: “If they are guaranteed
To come true, what would be your last requests?”
The problem: it resonated with my every-right
To pick at it too much. Proof is, “Two.
My picks are to have total control over time,

And to show clocks and calendars a few new
Tricks, and to mean no affront when my thoughts
Bump off all of my enemies, as if with cobras
That I’ve trained to peck them with kisses, or
With grand slam bats that don’t know from bunt.”

Next was, “Three. Banish me to an island
On some other planet out in the stellar ocean,
And insure that it is securely privatized,
Hidden under a dome, with the water there
A love potion for my harem to bathe in and drink —

Home-sweet-home.” That’s too effortless-looking,
Even if all about timing, your pupils like nails
Crying havoc on the blackboards of clichés, and “Four.
I’d go for a magic lamp, to make wishes
For a magic carpet, and a magic wand...

And I want three steps, Mister, if you will...
Although my saying as much is like tattling on
What corresponds to or is my wish to leave
No unpaid debt or uncollected bill”; and, “Five.
I demand to do my fifteen minutes famously,

With the dozen inbred fakes who sat on my jury,
The prosecutor, and that sleeping bastard judge,
And I will witness justice done at their being
Impaled upon fourteen burning stakes
For their burbling down into ashes or fudge.”

Style is its own drawback, in delineation.
But rhyme being passé, and “Free Verse Only”
In nearly every ad, is a crock. Who was it said,
Professors of political science, musical theory,
And religion had better man my thorny oars?

Then came, “Six. Well, as corny as it may sound,
I’d like a golden harp, functioning wings,
Plus a virgin-pure angel’s gown, and I want
Out from this secular-humanist here and now
And the feeling of being made to stick around.”

And, “Seven. Later for your game of pretend!
I’ve no plans to go anywhere soon!
The tussle I’m giving is till the bitterest end,
When, if coming to in hell, I will be no boon
But someone with whom the devil must contend!”

Open up, and admit a little something:
Light around your face in a mirror in the dark
Means the room isn’t all that dark; now, read,
“Eight. I am loath to indulge in the folly
Of prophesy about a future that I don’t expect

To be either as jolly or as humbling
As life as my master or me as its pet.”
On to, “Nine. Whatever happens does its do,
With or without my commencement address.
You can list me with however many or few

I have half a mind to show you mine
If you show me yours; for if you dare
Show me that you too have a serrated soul
That slips easily free from its bony handle

And glances back at the diptych image
Of a shattered glass house of cards,
A family framed but not flat on its back,
Not appended to your antiseptic bedding,

To the rod knocking in your idling heart,
Or to your breath that reeks of methane,
I’ll flash you my gorgeous whiteladylegs
(They haven’t any muscles but can glide

Across a homeplate like two phantom limbs
Bluebirding over a Kirlion rainbow); and I have
Sometimes a clown’s scarlet letter of a nose,
That runs, and is my bowsprit and barometer,

And is the first of me in testing the walls
And ceilings through which I go to split.
So, if you are not a scratch-n-sniff decal
Pasted on the side of the alibi

Of someone hearing how everybody knows
I’d rather starve to death than have pizza,
Ice cream, jazz, or onion rings
Somehow piped into my feeding tube,

Show me yours; or accept it that my listening
To nurses listening to radio talk shows is fine,
And living is listening to housewives
Who phone in in the wee morning hours,

Each laying her claim that in a past life
She had been an Egyptian princess —
Never you mind that the night’s topic is divorce,
Female ejaculation, the population bomb,

Or assassination conspiracies. Because
One of these crazy-crazy nights
The nurses will be in a rock-n-roll mood
Or they’ll tap into some sweet soul music.

Living is also the black sister nurse
Who washes me, sings gospels, leaves a mint leaf
Under my tongue, and promises me that one day
I’ll wake up knowing things — things like

Where/when does The Incredible Shrinking Man
Stop shrinking; how far is Up; which way is
Far-out? — Up is there... right there...
Way the heck up. Far-out is when eternally

You come and go as you please.
The Incredible Shrinking Man smothers
Or drowns when tinier than the molecules
That will sustain him. Cruzon v. Missouri,

Like when hearing her father’s Daddy home,
As I in long seconds’ ticking hid in her closet,
And how’s my princess, my cupcake, then his groan,
Tasting, savoring, his daughter’s tongue. I knew.
Ssh! Put your hand here on me. Feel that beating?
That’s where my heart’s been sagging ever since.
Some blessing this is, eh, some kind of a gift,