when I was born I don’t remember much
but greed and pain and milk for lunch
I would go out into the day
I would play in the abandoned lots
they were cleared for me
they were clearly for my pleasure, 
for whatever little project I had started
and then my brother came;
my brother,
and then all of these things they changed
I would fly from feeling squeezed out and abandoned straight to guilt
then to these things in tandem, simultaneously sickened and enraged

When I was a child I was a loser, I was a whimper, I was a product of the praise parade
an over-privileged undeveloped strain of second grader brain
of outsized expectation, best in the nation, in the estimation of
those who loved me, those who taught me that every act of love it is transactional
in the arms of my mother, from a distance with my father
on a bike ride with my brother. with the dog through an electric fence

and when I lived there in the trailer, I was her lover, I was her dedicated Minstrel,
doing time with all the narcissistic men
who had spurned her, who put her back to bed
without dinner, never shaking her awake
even now I am creating, I am fabricating
every living thing I need
from your headache, from her stomachache,
from the pulsing beating body of her flesh
the precious temple of your flesh

and when I traveled cross the country
it was torture
it was glory
it was light upon my face
but the loneliness it comes in waves
and what I learned then from the grasses,
from writing one song every day,
was nothing to the truth extracted from every cultural collision
con’t take rides from strangers
don’t take nothing you can’t handle,
you can’t separate from your own piece of mind
from your prick
from the groping educating hands
that show you how it is among the primates
zmong the people that you love
and those that loving’s always done to

once we shared a couch
I used it for sleep
you for pleasure
you for pleasure every Sunday
every Sunday you would meet them at the same time
they were your friends
they were your cathode ray companions beamed from space
they taught you science
I taught you love and other automated things
once we sang together
at first we weren’t very good
then you weren’t very good
then we both felt pretty awkward
as I pushed for always more improvement,
always forward movement on the fronts that meant the most to me
with my nose to every titty that I’d see

I am a loving sex machine
in the sense that it would take a specialist to repair me, to repair me
but I can’t stand this being fixed
I’d rather if you’d knock me about
then I could be mad-- instead, despairing
instead, despairing
instead of laying in the ditch
with all the refuse of the roadside refugees
those that travel on in search of many-colored dreams
instead of all this hardcore stuff
photography.
you wanna put me in your book
under plastic
with all the men and women lost to time
with all the other memories

another piece of refuse is refusing to come to your attention
it's hardly worth a mention that this garbage has a name
I cannot win
I lay here on the floor
not in the middle of the floor
but to the side
where you can choose now to ignore me
to ignore me
until it is time to pack your things and then to go
to the seashore
to the ocean
to the place where we were born
once before we were humans
we could live there
we could swim and we could breath
znd at the bottom of the ocean
zre all the things you’ve left behind
they’d been waiting
anticipating the time that you’d arrive
here’s a quarter
here’s a penny
here’s that sweater that you loved
here’s your dance shoes
here’s an apple core
znd way down at the bottom there is me

I’ve been a martyr
I’ve been a diver
I was your grumpy greyhound driver
I was the bangle on your wrist
I was the chocolate you couldn’t resist
now just a piece of this
rusted ruddy edifice
this crayon-ready
assemblage of the still-unsteady
tribute to the weak and wary
passengers
here’s to the passengers
to the passengers
the passengers
here’s to the passengers
to the passengers
to the passengers of love