Last night I woke to visions of the whale
and on the black wall of my mind
the strangled Ahab floundered in the ropy sea
and I lay gasping at the flushing in my heart
while Moby Dick went sounding down my soul.

My nightmare mind projects it on the hidden wall
and Moby Dick is monstrous on the wall
and guzzles down my innocence like wine.

Ah Melville, rest ye easy?
Far from this sad world where men are daily
dragged to Davy's Locker?
Where overhead the seabirds scavenge
for the fluttered bits of dreams the ocean vomits?

I am not a listener to tales
and yet I've thrown my own harpoons
and more than once have found
they flew their mark
and more than once have found
they speared a friend.

And Moby Dick is monstrous in his mystery.
Un-impressed by Ahab's sacred madness
(Ahab called him evil and went casting
lone and vain
upon the fearful waters of his heart)
un-impressed and wakened
once he turned and nodded once
and sent the blameless Pequod down the drain.

The fury all is in me
turning on itself
and I become like Ahab
molding pointless lances
and I become like Stubb the mate
still chuckling in despair.
Serene, like Queeg-queg, trying on his fate.
And I am Starbuck
rational and frozen
overwhelmed and turning
lost in Ahab's whirlpool eye.

But I am most like Ishmael
most like him who
in the awful clamor
floated on a coffin
round and round the circling edge of doom

staring horrified across a vacant sea.

Because you cannot live
piecemeal

one man each
for the tea
and sympathy
one for the bedroom
study
and den

and because they will not
hold still
for the stitches

one patchwork husband
the sum of his parts

you will drop
that sweet nightmare
and settle for me

a factory model
with kinks

slightly used

but that won't
at least
split at the seams.

the newspapers chorus
her son's misdeeds
a litany sung
in familar tones
neglect
abuse
those old mortalities

miscarriage
one more prayer
unanswered

delinquency
guaranteed
by birth

a seed
the doom
her baby

curled up
behind bars
a rabid stray

all night
God's judgment
smokes along her nerves

The clouds in this room
settle heavy as winter,
these inches of sheet
a white tundra between us.

So how can my fingers,
bare-knuckled and groping,
creep chilled through that wasteland
to paw at your flesh?

On such black nights as this,
when our minds whirl up blizzards,
when hearts, like slow peasants,
lie shredded by wolves,

the body leaves pride
stiff and blue in the snowbank,
taught only one instinct
and one way back home.

My father didn't vote this year.
In a country like ours
he says
it's the least he could do.

They came for him
late one night
in black vans
with no license plates.

When Mom went downtown
to protest
she was gone all week.

Back home now
on the sofa
she watches TV
all day
in dark glasses
and won't talk

and can't stand
to be touched.

To his credit
Dad stood his ground
when they dragged my big brother
kicking
from the soccer field
and hot-wired his groin.

To this day he can't pee
without screaming.

But how can a man not break
when he hears how they've hauled his
beautiful stuck-up daughter
hysterical
from a closet
and spent all night
in his kitchen
honing razors
on her face?

It wasn't until they started
strangling
me
all of nine years old
outside his door

that he crawled from his cell
with no food
and just a spigot dripping
sludge

spitting rat bones
and bug legs

and government slogans.

Someday I'll be old enough to vote.

I can't wait.

In a country like ours
it's the least I can do.