End Baptismal
by Ben Coleman
University of Baltimore
Ben Coleman is a writer, musician, and activist in Baltimore, Maryland. He has spent his adult years escaping a life of crime as a punk rock and experimental musician, student, day laborer, refugee advocate, and general practitioner of melancholia. He is known to wander and speaks to neighborhood cats.
Electricity mining for a vessel
A head with deep scales and a spinning hose
What grew out of Brahma’s day in his bathrobe
Self-bottled and gurgling in petroleum footsteps.
Sitting stately, armed behind a fan
For airing grievances and blowing them back
On your hide made of elastic winter
The soprano of the weapon-heart calling you closer
And becoming ten hearts.
You chafe like lips, freshly shaven.
Tall, manic, and anxious for rain
Receding gums tire tracks 2-ounce bottles
At the window, sapsuckers and wild geese
Styling hair with ointments for yeast infection.
Possible collusion, bacterium arrangements
Trainlines cancelled for lack of political will
Dating a finned good jobber for the smoother skin
Their anti-aging device poking fun at side-walking
In a cloak of madness, a spider web you didn’t see.
One little lamp of solid blue for color-blinders
Immune to subtlety in refractions of light.
A dress form is all you are, karma pupil.
You wish you were gliding, a two-step with your lover
Instead scratching ribs with leaves from a silver oak.
I’ve been in this apartment before
Investing in unknown disease slurping sounds
On an eye-roller coaster with moldy bread
Elbow smashed on raised floral upholstery
Thick strokes of oil with wrong tones for a face.
The corner of your room is a babysitter
Afraid to yell or make love in the window.
But it’s good to see you out of your chair
Shaking collapse in your bathrobe
While you howl at the cracks in the ceiling plaster.
And escape your I.V.