EMPATHY

Her late arrivals make you bless your luck.
Her early exits make you want to cry.
One night before she leaves for work you pluck
A sleepseed from the corner of her eye.

You lay it like a lozenge on your tongue
Then lean back on your bed and wait for sleep.
Soonafter you're descending rung by rung
A ladder leading down a passage deep

Beneath the sidewalk of your neighborhood.
Fat rats at rest in nests begin to coo.
You try to concentrate but then the wood
Disintegrates beneath your pawing shoe

And sends you flailing down the dark to land
Within a room awash in reddish haze.
You squint. You listen. Finally you stand.
A blast of Mariachi music plays.

You pinch yourself like dreamers do. Instead
You find you have no flesh to pinch. Hard bone
Is all you are: a horror film undead,
Obscenely ivory and all alone

Onstage before this green-eyed audience.
"Now touch yourself," your woman's voice commands.
You feel your nether capillaries tense
And watch in wonder as your fleshless hands

Begin to stroke the only thing that's left.
"Now dance around," she says. "I want to see!"
And suddenly you're thankful for this theft
Of silly packaging, a man set free

To do the shimmy-shake for once, to heave
Your hips and fling your flimsy armature
Around that peepshow stage 'til you receive
Applause from underneath the theater:

Cockroaches whap their wings, a weave of worms
Whip down their tails, two rats approach, ask you
To work for them, they'll figure out the terms
Next week, they say you'll get your own revue...

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