Rent Poem

In here, I can say anything.

I can demand a half-hour more

in bed in the morning-- before

the inevitable paper taped to my door,

before public scrutiny, before having

to give some dry plausible excuse.

It’s always been my dream to marry rich.

In here, I can tell you the truth:

living is expensive. Or, I can lie.

I can say: along with solitary hovels

on fluorescent streets, day-labor jobs

and letters from the state’s attempt

to repossess my education, what else

separates me from the great

suffering artists of the last century.

All my choices so far require

a constant philanthropy, a mother-type,

patron saint. Maybe, more important

than love are those other equal desires --

of roast chicken, of down comforters,

of Ikea catalogues and scented candles.

This poem is about hope:

emotion’s unmanageable soap bar

that lathers and perfumes

our hands until we really squeeze

and it slips ahead of us in time, lost

in the bath of our best efforts.

Landlord, this is all I’ve got.

Landlord, in here, I’m a radiator

thrumming against the wall.

Words drift off to sleep warmed

by me, this poem, so like the hour

the train sounds its blue horn

every night we fix alarm clocks

to its regularity. Potted plants go up

and down the staircase of this poem,

each at a different stage of dying.

Through its thin walls you can

make out the next poem coughing

as it watches TV, can listen as long

drawled out voices on the noonday

porch drink from brown paper bags.

This poem is hiding a cat and dog!

Can I use words to turn the faucet

back on, to coax out each drop?

I will rhyme until the air conditioner

gets fixed. Landlord, I can pay those

ignorable late fees with metaphors.

I have this unrelenting music

I saved for just this moment.

I can sing you, Landlord. Tell the world

she walks in beauty with the courtyard light

of loudmouth neighbors and trespass signs,

and all those guests parking overnight

meet with a ticket as her surprise.

Sing, sing singing door to door

like an evangelist, I see you peering in

my window. I hear the keys rattle

as you disappear down the single flight

of stairs alone, bobby pins holding up

the smoke smell in your hair and

that chronically worried look.

You know what it’s like to go unloved?

Looking for shelter in a thunderstorm.

An entire army foraging through

starving winter by walking hills and valleys

of bombed farmhouses--- stale potatoes

in the cellars, stone onions in the dirt,

a wild hen’s last yellow egg, picking

sawdust from out the flour.

It’s hearing the dead metal

scratch as the usual key turns inside

the wrong lock. It’s coming home

to a kicked-in door with drawers

turned upside down in the living room,

then moving through the world like

a refugee carrying bedrolls on your back.

Landlord, this is no simple act of charity.

I have built you this poem to live in.

I’ve not given it a name, you can name it.

I’ve left blank space to be filled in later,

and, in the boxes and flatbed trucks

coming and going, strangers

pairing off and moving away, here

is the occasional mercy of knowing

you fit somewhere permanently.

Reviews

[W.k.kortas]

This is a world class tour-de-force, nothing less.