Your space reflects whatever goes on within

It betrays you, it baits you and it says

From all these overturned items

Flung and fallen, frayed and forgotten

You will find creative conductors

The other world looking out with faces

Only you see. Somehow here

You discover daring and dumbfounded

Divinity as you drag dirty socks

Spread eagle magazines to respective piles

A half dozen dog eared books

Doodles, lost keys, somebody’s number

Scribbled on a scrap

Tattered old photos

Rotting yogurt, a dead plant , mouse traps

Your favorite blue jeans in distress

A single shoe, a legal pad full of your own writing

Which you can’t read unless beyond sober

You tell people you know where everything is

Which is true because it is all on the floor

Occasionally under and in your unmade bed

Mouse droppings, angry unsent letters,

Circulars, unpaid bills, threats from the IRS

A dagger, open tubes of paint stuck in shag carpet

Your ID, a to do list from another life

Still not finished or even started

Roaches, dead lighters,

A jar of vaseline , a broken Buddha

Your grandmother’s rosary

Stiff Kleenex , a dog whistle, dead batteries

A burnt out sex toy

Stained painted shit ,

Even an invitation to someone’s wedding

They’ve already divorced you think

Twinkie wrappers, bits of broken plastic

Smooth pebbles wrapped in a page of hieroglyphics

Some kind of spell, a few wired gizmos

Mementos, momentous mint tins adorned

With sugar skulls or played out memes

Dead roses, a long lost BIC lighter

Ticket stubs, wisdom teeth, coins from other countries

You have never been to, a blank video case

Recipes for beet soup and sour dough bread

You still plan to make, so many things that make no sense

Until you’ve sorted them and assigned them to a drawer

A box, the waste basket or a more immediate spot

For no particular reason.

You wrestle with lawless disorder

feeling a little deranged , vexed

Because you let things get so beyond messy

The voices of critics wonder

How do you live like this?

You no longer try to explain

You shrug instead and ignore them

You’ve never met a tidy genius

Iconoclasts are not anal retentive

Order is artless

Not what you’re after

And you know this now

Deconstructing the rubble

Left in the wake impulses

And inspiration that takes hold every time

You remember things fall apart

Rough beasts slouch

Back and forth to Bethlehem

While you avoid Bedlam

By singing

Bedbugs and Ballyhoo

Wooing a new opus