Hollow

 

Don't try flattering me;

don't tell me Pittsburgh is Paris.

Inside me there's a closed factory where my smiles pile up,

each one tied up in court, edgy as a man with a pushy mistress.

 

Bruce Springsteen came by today.

He claims you shoplifted photographs of his ex-wife,

giving them each a coral ankle bracelet and a tube of sand.

If it looks like a thing, it is that thing, and twice on Sunday ain't that right?

 

In the weird bookstore of alternate honeymoons,

I discovered your secret blue clarinet hidden in a cloak.

I was a waitress once, I still know what you want before you ask

but I'm slow in bringing it, resentful, bitchy, getting old.

 

You are good solid maple, I am balsa,

but it's you who jumps at noise that's just kids ripping us off.

Send me into our future, I'll go and even curb my tongue--

the only thing I had that seemed fine and wild and mine enough.

 

Inside the closed factory where my smiles pile up,

I cock-teased the lawyers until they gave up their writs.

Bruce and I went down to The River where I found my ring--

I roll it like my back ain't got no bones, home to you, to us, to this.

____

from wisteria's Patti Smith word list, for this 

 

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