I’M EMILY DICKINSON
Surprise! I’m Emily Dickinson
Smokin’ weed with my
Motorcycle poet
Outlaw gang
In our motorcycle poet
Outlaw hangout –
Amherst, Ma. / 1800 something
Fine day to be up
To no good
To be up at all
Don’t mind if I do
Syntactically naughty in our leather lingerie
We’ve all
Got secrets
And helmets
I say, goodly
Morrow, citizen Amherstians…
Mine’s got sparkles
And stars beset
In jeweled constellations
Safety first! Then heck, then
Uproarious abandon!
Frolic righteously and
Sportingly down
Twisty streets
Also somewhat noisily
O perambulating sun, you
Hang on up there! Shine
Wholeheartedly and
Equally on everyone
Nonjudgmental, as in
An excellent English class
Home to startling
Industry and abject
Laziness, a kind of
Mental factory for excuses and A’s
It isn’t easy being
Famous and dead
I mean bursting with life
Busting out of my
Certified pilgrim bustier
Enthralled by all rank
And seductive images
The modest seamstress
With her silver needle
Psychedelic dildo on a corner counter
Play another love
Song to the open heart
I have spoken with the oracle
And know this to be true
Hang on a minute –
We have seen
Many things
Both dire
And pleasing
Any done, gone
Fragmentary wisp
An insatiable blip
Torrid flick of ash
Upon the adjunct carburetor
Another rogue adventure for elbows and fingers
Our human bodies aflutter with
Humanity! And I tell you, we
Dig it, certainly most of it
So proud to have been there
And tasted each dish
Morning bashing us awake
With its sweetened promise
Of juicy urgency
And expert commas
Also, sparingly, the lovely semicolon
Naked, nude: yes, the undressed sentence
Both coincidence and consequence
Momentary, mercenary –
And thus begin the consensual journey
We’ve done this before, forever
Taking our leave; there would be
Woolen stockings and thick boots
Casanova of the bicycle repair shop
Svengali of the Christian Science reading room
It’s a rush, in a rush; all identities
Battling for traction, people/ one
With it, in it, all over it, through it, because
Of it, in spite of it, for it, not it
Not the glorious wind in our mutual faces
Not the wind, not us, not the faces