What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (8)

8

And now I'm a surrealist painter
and the moon is below me.
I twist and turn, making my way through all the banter,
the crowd all ignores me.
The dazing lights,
the buzzards crooning on country porches
while all the girls are hapless and distraught
over open corpses.
Death is but a number;
the world frowns and crumbles,
rockets launching through the ceiling.

I feel a pinch in my nerves –
the twilight shifts and shakes, but never falters.
The dim day avoids me,
the earth rotates and rumbles,
skyscrapers crash and crumble to the ground
to the dismay of tiny dancers all along the scene.
We wrinkle and smirk,
we try to justify everything,
we try to fix everything
but always come away aching, aching, aching.

I wake up diluted amongst a mess of scabs and crustaceans.
The alcohol still burns from the night after,
the sheets and beddings scattered about the room –
all around me lay people I don’t know,
people pierced and tattooed and drained – all checked out –
bare like my kitchen cabinets and refrigerator.
I stare up at the ceiling looking for rockets,
but they never seem to have left.