Michael Lista

Well I guess that’s all locked up tight Says Sam who guards the mall at night. Sam’s a puppet! He can’t use his eyes. His body is an excellent disguise. I’m Muffy the Mouse! I’m condemned to rhyme Until the Christmas special end of time. That’s Jodi, my human friend. The world goes on and on and will not end Hiya there Jodi. Oh hi Sam. Jodi straightens Jeffrey’s magic tam. Everything’s safe here let’s go upstairs Sam says through a moustache Props repairs. Jodi is so pretty. I hate her. She carries Jeffrey up the escalator To the kid’s department every night Where he turns into space and starlight When I say the magic rhyme. Jeff’s a mannequin Until the mall goes dark. Then he’s a man again.

An old man on Grace Street is going mad In a Canadian T-shirt he won’t change And red unwrinkling pants I thought had made Him stylish when I met him in the spring — Five or six times a day I see him walk Down Grace Street to St. Francis church, and knock And pull its wooden doors, always shocked That his entitled holy place is locked. Undreams Damascus from a baffled Paul, Rolls back the road where some unstricken Saul Rises up, as bubbles through a beer To a surface where we disappear And wake in some uncalendared forever, An unwelcome Elijah passing over.

Make them say yes before you even ask, L’essence de charme,c’est ça. The mind’s a damsel Locked in a tower with her fathom of   hair. Coax the braid and it’ll all be over. The rooms are plain where I am interviewed, Abstract and clinical, and so I glory Like a corpse plant, perfume the marble-faced With the reek and prodigy of my tomorrows. Dying is so boring as the soul Rummages the liquidation sale For a final bargain — But time outbids all comers, and we die Expensively in Princess Margaret Who was herself once so beautiful.

The girl from Scarborough liked being slapped Down the hall from where her mother slept. A big, hard-working hand, anybody’s To come medicinally down, antibody To the slow infection of   her Western face (what sucked the most was that it wasn’t fast). Some birds don’t migrate. Above, two lonely fowl Scream across the sky their only vowel. This river I step in is not the river I stand in. We’ll drive to Leslieville, wherever, Park in the Guildwood GO lot and get stoned. Who’s there? Nay, answer me. Stand And unfold yourself. Her heart begins to pound. No geese go winging to the rooky pond No goslings disappear their small and speckled. If we endure this, it will make us special.