I will never be a Tanner.
Even the cat's got a better chance at surnames around here.
But, no matter what Willie says,
I won't ever be a part of that particular tribe.
Somebody sings, "I've got my books and my poetry to protect me."
I've just got this orange fur, which is probably made of felt.
I miss Melmac.
Its verdurous skies overhead like a dense canopy of overgrown foliage,
Summers out on the blue grass
Playing bouillabaisseball under a sun of wild vermilion,
Or just buccaneering ad libitum around its lower east side in my youth.
Somebody calls out
Gordon,
And I remember,
Without remembering,
The name Shumway and its lost significance here
Where I abide in exile;
In this land of disembodied laughter
That comes on quick like a sneeze
And then is gone;
This place ruled by skyscraping creatures whose pet cats you can't eat.
Jody gropes at me with her icy hands,
And I am left unseen and misunderstood.
A former highly esteemed member of the Melmac Orbital Guard,
Now I hide in the kitchen most of the time
Waiting for Lucky to stride by unaware—
As my eight stomachs all growl in a chorus of dissent
Like the rumblings of bad pipes in the walls, or a garbage disposal running on empty.
I am lonely and lost in this strange place
Where they build bombs to blow themselves up.
Same as we did back home
Before I followed that damn radio signal and crashed into the garage here—
Before I was an outsider,
A Diaspora of one.
I am secluded and shut-in like a leper,
kept a prisoner in order to have the freedom to still exist;
Trying to stamp an intaglio of my presence on the face of formless things;
Trying to make my own little order out of so much dust and air.
This good-for-nothing spaceship lying out all wrecked and ruined,
Never to be flown again.
There is no escape for me here now.
Just these endless days that keep coming and going,
That push me from the laundry room to the attic
Like some spectral drifter:
A nomad with bad hygiene whom you’d better hide from the neighbors.
I will never be one of you.
I am out here on my own,
At the ends of the known world,
Waiting for somebody else’s God to show up and right all the wrongs
That I keep forgetting were ever right in the first place.
davy carren (San Francisco, CA, 1977)
