The Power Of Speech

where do you get your sharps?
I need to know they’re clean
I’m allergic to dirty things
so don’t touch my pistol
unless you wash your hands
I get more trouble that way
than opposable thumbs allow

your voice sounds kinda thin
hold it up to the light for me
because I know about these things
I know what you were on the inside
you were a lavatory superintendent
and a bona fide shit herder

there’s no shame in that my friend
many a named player shovelled shit
I’m the prescient son of a prescient son
And I’d have had the readies handy
if I had only foreseen their coming

so spill me that trick you do
when you’re bombed out
down under the bleachers
it’s cheap seats for me and you
until we can fashion key holes
and the necessary certificates
to get us from here to there
wherever here or there is

I know you think you know me
but that’s unlikely to be the case
somethings are unknowable
and others have matching luggage
with irregular identities carved in haste
presumably out of dubious necessity

those spectators who crowd us out
at the soup kitchen
I pay them to stare at me
it forces me to remain spectacle
in a world that rains disappointment

but I’m over all that for the time being
except for the embarrassment
and the sudden deep coil reflex
when someone mentions her name
I know you don’t mean nothing by it
so don’t give it a second thought
I only called to reassure you
that I still have the power of speech
.