poem of the day 12.17.15

the ghost of pennoak manor drive

marilyn finally calls

on this night of all nights

says, you sound like you’re

in the middle of the street

five cop cars racing up

my little dead end block

i tell her i don’t know what’s going on

marilyn says, anyway i heard you called

four times, i think, while she was in jersey

as cop cars surround my neighbor’s house

marilyn back from two weeks in jersey

where she roamed her kid streets

and dropped her prudish act

to drink in bars with old friends

sweet lemony sugar drinks, she says

cops going up the neighbor’s driveway

to murder screams tv blasts electric guitar chords

and the sound of a motorcycle revving in a garage

are you sure you’re not outside, marilyn says

it’s my neighbor, jim, i tell her, and the cops

she says, i thought about you drinking those drinks

and wouldn’t you know it?

but on the plane ride back to pittsburgh

i got stuck sitting next to some christian fundamentalist

who kept asking me what i’d say

agnostically, of course, if god to spoke to me

impossible, i say

but not to marilyn to cops frog marching

crater-faced restless jim down his driveway

pressed up against the white car swirling blue/red lights

marilyn says, that’s what i told him

she says, you know i already feel comfortable talking to you

and i laugh

thinking she feels comfortable talking to me?

comfortable in my humorous madness restless heart

that wants to just finally get on a greyhound bus

and shoot straight to d.c. with colby and hit bars

drink the same sugar lemony drinks and make love words

to d.c. girls who don’t know me from anything

girls i’ll never have to muster the courage to see again

or have to call four times while they’re in jersey

this is what marilyn is comfortable with?

what’s happening? she says

i mean with your neighbor

they’re arresting jim letting jim go, i think

but the cops stick around

marilyn says, so are we getting together or what?

late may i’ve been at this with her for a month

to no success

yaass, yaass, i neal cassidy into the phone

groucho slouch around my room

looking for a paper and a pen to transcribe our fate

look out the window

jim whose crazed antics are legend on this street

jim who begged his wife to knife him last fourth of july

jim rumored to mentally torture his family

jim rumored to have killed his girlfriend’s dog

back in the sixties

jim the great satan shroud of pennoak manor drive

dressed year round in camouflage 

ghost white skin and bones

screaming

i’m sorry

i’m sorry

into the black night

while his wife and kids cry on the porch

while the cops slouchwatch against their doors

while the cops pushpullshove him into the backseat

and marilyn says, it sure sounds crazy

where you live.