Drive-In Movie Size: Poem by gordon nosworthy

maria, listen to my bones
they whisper messages to you
secrets I wasn't supposed to overhear
booby traps for an unwary heart

listen to my blood
it sings about you
the dazzling beast
with heartless demands

I smell you shining over the world
every moment of our days and nights
in a piety of killing
blessing, honoring, loving, slighting, maiming, butchering

turning inquiring souls into beggars
turning curious children into wounded beasts
turning those who really want to live
into the dead end ones

who just want to be allowed just to live
just to eat just to exist
regardless of the quality
of that existence:

the woman rocking lonely to and fro
the occupant of uncompromising halfhearted dreams
the aching drunk with an anesthetized heart
the erect rooming house priest blessing his arousal


the glass house judge deciding with the insatiable logic of lust
the disgruntled jock pitching self-depreciating blows to his family
the little man swelling himself to big man status with violence: the hitlers, the child molesters
the lame, crippled, psychotic, unprincipled, street walkers, dyslexic children, emotional cripples among us.

maria, listen
why can't they get your attention
even though you have ours
laughing dancing pirouetting spinning
in the palm of your hand?

one day it will end
we will only look alarmed
as the curtain rises
on our demises
all our mighty walls of logic
so carefully constructed like dykes
will tumble on our feet
so we can't run back to your hallucinations

: all looking for a little bit of god
looking for something
to prove
our little lives are drive-in movie size.