Sunday Poem by MARINA GIPPS

I was told to cover myself with agreeable surfaces
as if that writer who had won laurel wreaths.
I said No for I was full of shovels,
needing to further unearth my depth.

Nobody understood. Soon I was alienated.
Even the birds flew away with my hand outstretched with food.
I could not even bribe a squirrel.

Looking from my bedroom window
upon the ironically blue shadows of people
clothed in heavy sunlight below, I began to take shape:
walking gaily, my head detached though maniacally soiled.

In good early morning stride with many miles of ruination,
my brain overtaken by aliens since the day of my birth.
I carry a bag of wounds from a stick I swing over my left shoulder,
Shoo-ing the devil away.

Reminiscent of a Friday fish fry in Milwaukee,
my melodious bark downstream for a mountain shack
near the nothingness of beginning brook dreams.

My back, burned, facing this never-unfurled drunken world,
its whiskey breath at the nape of my neck;
flaying scales as if a jack-knife battering my jugular hopes.
The sly half-moon grins as it skitters off into a nebulous horizon.

Within the dusky halls of the milky-way lie my ghostly star friends,
long overdosed as I laugh alone.