THE THIRTEEN YEAR-OLD SCREAM

After work you re-park
The car, head
Over to the Russian hairdresser

For a trim, make small
Talk until Night Moves comes
On the radio, then close

Your eyes and tingle
As the razor grazes your now
Pink neck, come home

With the words
Rasping repeatedly, "woke
Last night to the sound

Of thunder," though you woke
Last night to the thrill
Of naked legs, the air conditioner

Clicking metronomic to some
Circadian pulse, what seems
To happen becomes its own happening

As the truths of a new
Millennium dabble and abscond, each
Consequent possibility—comfort

Nothingness, ecstasy, hope
Mutilation, wonder—occupies
Its provisional realm

Only to misplace itself in the relentless
Shuffle, this morning you gave
Sonny Pain thirty-five cents, Jews

For Jesus gave you
A brochure that asked if you were
Interested in "Computerized

Donuts" and you weren’t quite sure
What they were getting
At, the scar on the forearm of

The woman wearing white
Linen pants on
The train was shaped

Like a toy boat on the mottle
Of sewer waves and you proceed to grope
At what can only be approached

By a gape, mouth hot
And dumb, top lip
Thin as the bottom protrudes

In its sensual idiocy and don’t you see
The eyes of splendor
Penetrating the face of travail, the interminable

Act of remembering wrongly as "the night
Takes on a weird electronic
Tingle," for this is the place you return

To through the need
Of living, a cavern translated
By an immaterial

White profusion like
The color you see in the middle
Of clouds beyond airplane

Windows, you were asleep
When the foul world
Changed, your loves revoltingly

Aged, your hands grew
Cumbersome and a whole lifetime
Passed before you

Realized that it hadn’t, you were back
On the train where
The stifling obscenity of being

A thing causes the thirteen
Year-old girls to scream
"I need a dick" in harmonious unison

So that you might
Cringe, so that the transparency
Of grief might blush, so

That the silence might finally fuck off.