You who grew up diagonally under the power lines
with a cat, a couple of drunks and a backwater library,
straight enough to stand up without holding on
and shake a couple hands–if a little crookedly–
Did you think if you stuck right to the blueprints
in their books, you could ply them with your eyes?

A wink and a nod opens the door
but they wouldn’t have you! What did you think?
When you laugh, you show your teeth.

The rainy streets are changeless.
You can trace them to a childhood asleep
except for the hands.

A wink and a nod opens the door
but they wouldn’t have you! What did you think?
When you laugh, you show your teeth.

So you took a class or two in a cell under the city
like it made sense to do on a wage unduly shitty
and they spit on you for attempting something pretty
with a couple tons of marble and some kitchen knives.
So you took to the parks, with a view to taking things apart
handing out marks to the attendants of the Valu-Mart,
the check-cashing sharks, and old Chinese ladies pushing shopping carts
with their own ideas about their lives.
And it felt like you’d been given a ladder
that you knew could hold a million
if you could only find a few to lean it against.

After dark, you turn into your father.
When you drink, you pull upon his beard,
only to wake up next day in repentance
before the clean hard word that freed you.
And he knows that you steal his voice sometimes.
You were wrong to think he minds.
He says, “Scrap all your plans for the world, my groveling son,
I hate to hear the dry snap of the cord.
There’s a room with a bed and a table halfway down the hall.”

A wink and a nod opens the door
but they wouldn’t have you! What did you think?
When you laugh, you show your teeth.