Reply #2: Here's one...

[Longgrain]

That will probably make no sense to anyone but me...:-(







YOUNG AUDRIE REO

Or

HOW I BECAME A FATHER OVERNIGHT









Young Audrie Reo,
I snuck through the gate,
Past your guards to get to
Your street of
Black marbled houses,
Nervously jesting as I went,
Counting down the numbers to your door;
Passing all your fading belles,
Swinging my satchel before my waist
As I recalled a forgotten memory…

We met on your lawn
So excited to see one another--
You were still a girl
Wearing a training bra
Beneath your gray denim jacket--
But you wore a solid vest of gold.
I grabbed you by the arms
And limply pressed my lips
Into yours, like rubbing them across
The shiny orchid petals
Of an old corsage,
Just as we did when we were young;
But you broke away
And looked at me with your tangled blond eyes
And told me
That we could not do that anymore…

What a strange sequel I’m in,
Penned by a Goddess’s hand
Whose only intent was to
Blot out everything
You wrote about me
And tie-dye your beautiful loose ends…
The Book of the Month Club
Mailed me a facsimile of Her novel
It had a flat black sleeve
And a title so dark and green
It could not be read,
But the author’s name was printed clearly
In the lower left hand corner
In letters of white fire.

Starlight.

Mirror.

What have we done Audralene?
What terrifying visions of bridges have we burned?
Laughing through the streets,
Wearing nothing but potato bags,
Armed with nothing but a cheese grater.
“I was so happy,” lamented
The pig-faced woman
Dust jacketed in cellophane
As she sat at her window staring back at me,
As I burnt her split home…
I can now see,
She is the mother of my child…
Virgo if it’s a boy…
Audrie if it’s a girl…
It could have easily been you…

Now,
The rinsed Drag Queen takes his place
Atop the hotel
And we jealously cross your streets
To the Bedroom Museum
On this--the day of our reunion…
We tip-toe in, along with the auburn-faced men
Pushing through the turnstiles
Into the loft of the gallery,
Where they congregate
Behind black metal rails
And mingle with the curtains
In the niches along the walls…
From the train seat cafeteria,
To the movie screened floor,
They’re waiting for the Queens milk.
But you and I sit apart
On a white pedestal.
Your brother is there
Carrying his Squirrel--
Written into our story by an uncaring editor.
The squirrel comes between us.
She bites your foot.
You crush her head.
And you abandon me.
Vanished from my vision,
And I think of calling out--
“Audrie.”
“Audrie!”
“Audrie!!!”
But I stop myself;
And the doctors come in
And day suddenly become night,
Denying me the diffused orange aspirin of dusk.
The coarse, rainbow of Raccoons
Let out a harrowing scream
As they carry you away for me.
The police cars whoop in the darkness
With their bull-horned voices
Echoing under the trestles--
And their blue antlers--
Strobing like electric flame on the damp tar--
Which reflects everything
Except what I wish to smell.
You.
Audralene.

I will not follow the Hellbounds.
The Hellbounds do not follow me.

But Audrie Reo, I hear you…