Inside Out

I am the one you fear will invite over Chuck,

your nephew, my neighbor's son.

I like to chat with him, true.

Chuck was lucky enough to favor Matty,

     his mother, especially in the way

he holds a cigarette or pencil.

     He repsects taste.

Chuck will find refuge in a city

     and not grow cold and cynical

     as Matty did.

I am the one whom you want removed

--with no great fanfare, of course--

just so that the examiner revokes my

medical license.

The pear that you bruised

     just before I reached the counter

still is the only decent one left.

     You husband will swill plain spinach

huddled around a tv, ignoring what he eats

     and you who prepared it,

while my man will salivate spinach soufle

     by candlelight with Brahms.

The style even of my lawnmower

     menaces your neighborhood.

I am the one who's giving the church a bad name.

Characteristically they thought

     I was buying their silence

with the $400,000 for their carillon.

     Actually,  Dad had urged me to buy it

     as his memorial.

They couldn't imagine another motive.

     They deserve three more decades

of the hideous Victrola speakers

     blaring in the steeple.

It's just my luck to be trapped

     where I can't be Anglo-Catholic. 

I'm the one who attracts strangers to our street,

with beards and motorcycles and pot;

sometimes they're blacks or Mexicans,

not just servants, but guests.     

We talk plainly about ourselves.

I'm amazed by your freedom

     not to organize your life,

even as you reach beyond this Mahler

     to hear voices of your own.

My guests and I speak behind our words,

     admit we're alone and afraid.

From time to time we touch--what matter? 

We do not parcel our nearness

     nor set the boundaries

of who will cook, who will wash up.

     Permanence is for buildings, not for flesh.

A line of lovers, each a special dervish,

     vows only to the truth.

A latest rides his Honda 50 up to the patio.

          "What's happening, man?"

--three dimples raisin his chocolate smile.

I'm the felon!  I'm the queer!

I'm your local fairy.

It seems strange that the jonquil

     won't oblige when I command it to open.

I must not be a good fairy.