Return to Marblehead

Amid burnished oak, white wainscoting, pewter plates and aquablack
Marble, I sit in a pastel chair, looking for a glimmer of purple
In the berber rug.

My friends have become simple-minded physicians, naive venture
Capitalists, embarrassing mathematicians. How could this be
Where I came from?

A roar of my voice would paralyze them, but I save that
For driftwood and derelicts, high tides and schizophrenics,
Who feel its heat as love.

In this cold ghost town all they want to do is laugh
About big black dicks and marijuana, as bleached sand dollars
With slanted eyes look on from walls.

Home of the twisted rich, the non-wealthy's fantasy,
The place I couldn't get far or fast enough away from,
Still moves without changing, still includes me.

I thought I had grown from this island's grey soil,
But my soul's now asleep, its roots in distant yellow dirt.
I was dead once too, believed this real.

My bedroom has become another room in the inn.
Seagulls are painted on the walls, with eyes of ghosts.
Guests wander through, not knowing who they are.

Conversation like war, no one believes any theory.
The surgeon's recommendation, like the poet's prophecy, are things
That can't be proven, so don't have to be true.

I never thought I could hear so much silence.
There is no room for things outside of their form.
The unknowing terrifies here.

To surpass so many goals, and never learn anything—
It's a wonder. We were all tormented children, and now we're parents
Teaching what we tried to forget.