You can't get to heaven in a silver spoon
You can polish everything
except for the mark on you


Lisa Yuskavage, Manifest Destiny, 1997

Mea Sheen
-- by Dennis Mahagin

Oh, if they had the means,
put me in the San Diego
zoo, meanwhile
I'm sitting

here, being me and only
me, only

... and you?

In quasi-
misery? Reach out
then Homer! With needy limbs
so far from the tree, cracking
up like

one of those phony TV
evangelists, crocodile
saline pouring from duct
cuts, exposed, exposed
laying hands on harmless
snakes and garters,
snakes and garters ...

I suppose you never
made mistakes? Yet, no
Courvoisier either, no
cable, with porn
gravatar member ID,
no strange tang,
nor Ki. ;

Remember Jim Lang?

Oh, that blighter could move
me, blowing the kiss, at Tijuana
Brass, big time
class, that one;

but what about
the bachelorette
who ditched
your ass

in old Spokane?
Or a mere idea
of Milan? Christ,
why not pour
all your

hate on her? Leave me
my thorny cross, called Being
Great, being great. I can't kiss
it, cannot
exculpate.

Listen, if you met me
in a maelstrom, what
I'm saying be glad

I'm not a Norm watching
half hour sit coms after
six, wheel of fortune Alex
Trebek old grand
dad.

Don't you know
the shitstorm
is bound to hit
land? Soon enough,
soon enough, so what
is a little
taint? Cheek
stubble to a shadow,
to a stand up
guy?

Oh, I'll give
"troubled"
-- to the first saint
among you who looks

me in the eye.