The little ones can't ride him
If he hangs with his pal all the time.
It's like a train
Announcing a time
Known only to them
Among the timeless,
Who need watches always.
The water in the bucket
Is half-staff in the hot sun.
I fill it up, in a spiral
And the talk time in the waiting
The present out, to Jill Clayburgh,
Inevitably, keeper of a so-called history
Where women finally stepped into
A different kind of on-screen shit.
How they ragged against EST
In her movie, what the mule lady's
Mother was into, saddled with
A serial philanderer
(Think Sex, Lies and Videotape)
Satiric like a clock, the depiction
Of the vampiric cult of the cult decade
(You decide)
But time is all inside
Our gut, it's our choice to express
Whatever has happened, or whatever will,
And for me, it's of Suzy Van B,
Who lived at our home one summer
To escape a particularly toxic
Alcoholic fiberglass salesman,
When I had nothing better to do than
Follow her around
In pre-pube training
To the pools, the bars, the afternoon
Therapy sessions, jumping naked
Out of birthday cakes, only to learn,
Heartbroken, she'd discovered EST
And soon flew west to California
Bedding straight for the leader of the cult,
Some Werner dude,
Who prophesied self-worth
As a problem to be solved
Like toilet bowl rings but cooler.
And he was into EST, the Mormon college
Instructor, who educated many a sister wife
In the ways of being burned beyond recognition
For their own good.
More pain that's just been filed away
In a careful emotional inventory
That only comes out as the horse
Stretches — an Arabian peninsula day,
Mobilgas Pegasus in its artificial skies —
Where all the people make their reappearance
As shame in our lives, in a clarity that would have
Overcome us, in our salad days.
The shame is such we can't tell anyone,
Not even ourselves. It's very different
From the addictions — to adderall
Or valium when the addiction
Is to love, hopeless love,
Impossible to stop,
Only that delicate touch
Of ham-handed sweat.
It brings a chill
That echoes through
Your very being,
Just to feel it,
The icy cool.
The kind you'd only
Ever found before
In Hollywood.
