Adrienne Rich — Delivered Clean

You’ve got to separate what they signify from what they are distinguish their claimed intentions from the stuff coming out from their hands and heads The professor of cultured dynamics taught us this They’re disasters in absentia really when supposedly working Look at the record: lost their minds wrote bad checks and smoked in bed and if they were men were bad with women and if they were women picked men like that or would go with women and talked too much and burnt the toast and abused all known substances Anyone who says they were generous to a fault putting change in whoever’s cup if they had it on them always room for the friend with no place to sleep refused to make what they made in the image of the going thing cooked up stews that could keep you alive with gizzards and onions and splashes of raw red wine were loyal where they loved and wouldn’t name names should remember said the professor of cultural dynamics what messes they made The building will be delivered vacant of street actors so-called artists in residence fast-order cooks on minimum wage who dreamed up a life where space was cheap muralists doubling as rabble-rousers cross-dressing pavement poets delivered clean of those who harbor feral cats illegals illicit ideas selling their blood to buy old vinyls living at night and sleeping by day with huge green plants in their windows and huge eyes painted on their doors. (for Jack Foley)