mad dog plights and broken hobo dreams

[Doreen Peri]

(2004- dedicated to izveryboyin aka kayla scott)

people are making up stories
about me, putting my name inside
paragraphs, claiming me to
make new the light,
leave the love 'til the love is right
and i need new hands, new blue green
yellow eyes – blind babies suck
from me my gaiety and humor.
blue collars yank me to the streets.
i am ravaged by mad dog plights,
broken hobo nightmares.
want to hear me scream?

i linger in cafés with theatre stars.
i own banal domestic furnishings.
my confetti is made from ripped sunday comics -
printing ink bleeds into the lines on my palms.
i use bicycle chains to hold my brains
inside my skull,
scratch my head with fingernails
let the steam outa my hull.
i am a ship flipped upside down

i ain't no hip hop queen!
i drown in the vibrations
from my throat. no clatter
of a telegraph can make my name matter,
no jingle of a telephone or cacophony
of some typewritten splatter of verbiage
can make me experience the eerie feeling
of roller coaster ascent!

i ride the sky like a first elevator ride,
the dazzling aura of electric light pretends,
no, mocks me. who are these people
who shock me with headline news,
my name on the front page hung out
to dry? and why?

i am stimulated by the fair
people are takin' trips to glasgow,
showin' off their european jets
ramblin' about tours and more
than that, making stories sing my name
but it ain't me who wins at any canival game.

i surface from
life vignettes, bounced up
from a seat drop on a trampoline.
i live for electricity and objectivity.
i do this intuitively.
it is my nature to weep.

i'm my own bustling child,
i nurture myself, mouth open wide.
i am vulnerable to fractures.
i map out landscape vistas.
i got blistered hands, sista,
hands which grab a pen to steady
a never ready mic.

nobody will like
my paintings of the circus like the clowns.
nobody will want to buy them accept the acrobats.
want to hear me scream? my collar's so tight
i'm choking on my words while somebody's
writing absurd tales like scat songs.
i am the song they sing.

i am no aristocrat from the country.
i live a dissolute life dancing words in cabarets.
i bring myself cotton candy verse on a stick.
bars and bordellos are my mainstay.
i lick my glass clean.
who are these people who write stories
with my name imprinted in title lines?
who are these people who dream me up
like that?

i deny fat popular leisure
i focus instead on the belle époque.
if i survive this beautiful era, i will die.
i will be a dead survivor, the laughing stock
of mad dog hobo nightmares.
my plight is to throw confetti
to air streams only to be blown
back into my yellow eyes by acid rain.

I am bold, lucid and profane.
music halls and vaudeville shows
bill me in waning fluorescent
i am the opalescent unfortunate maid.
who are these people and what have they made
from my initials?