Nelson Gary

A Little Criminal

The brain trust broken happened

Through the bullying of indifference,

The lurking of incoherence. No fault

Policy, the other cheek turned, spanked,

Tunes cranked in the solitude, cracking

The wall with its graffiti scrawled

As memorial once known in anonymous

Intimacy. Showered, I don’t call those

Dirty numbers, the penciled-in, calendrical

Squares swung once with secret sharers

Of these dark times enclosed, any longer.

Masked outsiders, most all are glued

To the computer. The whipping post

Made, the refrain usually from taboo.

A minimum is this totem pole carved

Electric with faces I once knew. Social

Article of soul has no references; therefore,

It has been retracted, discipline as a friendly 

Gesture: the journey of the faceless face.

Elsewhere, the deleted post made you moist.

You could somehow hear a bittersweet voice.

The integrity of the errors, honest mistakes,

The core of the corrections; your haircut,

A pageboy, the color of fire and brimstone.

I don’t know what to do on Zoom this alone

But trust my confession has not alienated

You more in your harrowing walk with the bored.

Bony you have become, a connoisseur

Of the humdrum, a collagist of invisible

Maps, peeling layers of skin on the shore

Of your lips.  Hatefully, I long for the big-screen

Kiss, a Tantalus, at a tree of knowledge

With his serpent in his fist. Your profile

On Facebook is a little criminal, a parole

From the manic, I suppose. Why reveal

The wounds, other than here on Zoom?

You’re right: “Too many dogs.” But 

You set them off with envy and spite

In the encyclopedic silence that defines

Most of the history of unseen humankind.