Baltimore & Car Alarms

when it gets right down to it,

no one has a clue.

the more you know about something, the less.

i fell asleep with her voice in my head.

heard a cop siren billowing in the clouds

and the coal-smoke adolescent dawn -

shuffled out in underwear, lit a cigarette and stood

watching silent cars, trees, grass, garages, darkened apartement windows.

the only thing i heard was that siren.

no squealin tires. no downshiftin. just that siren.

and i remembered carrying a friend's coffin down those stone church steps

out on the sidewalk and into the hearse.

all the while you could hear his body sloshing around inside,

buoying off the linen-lined walls of this casket we carry heavy with death.

he fit in this new world like a kid fits into fat man's clothes;

seven year old scrawny whistler look scarecrow-macabre-minstrel-liliputian

galloping 'round in size 56 hot-air-balloon overalls.

i wanted the dancing to stop rattilin corpse in this coffin

in my mind. i wanted him to turn to blood and seep out this casket

onto our clothes into our shoes, make the women throw up and the men

scream like dingoes. i wanted to sleep with his blood between my toes.

tonight, i think of her and this siren fills my thoughts.......