I AM MAD AND THIS IS HOW I DANCE
I wheel my bed into the yard,
stand it upright, braced on all sides
by ropes. I am too small to house skies,
bat-winged angels drunk on tar,
dogs scraping their tongues
against pavement. My veins
finger through cement
until they find grass, Irish fields
of winter wheat.
What a strange curse to be God,
stuffed with blood and poked
with so many holes.
I need no priest.
I roll my long hands out
to the rag people whose fingers
lace up through sewer lids,
spines hunched in a room
below ground.
I want to let go of it,
believe me.
My bones are too small to arch around it.
But it is morning and I am featherless,
black-lunged from a night in long tunnels.
The light has me by the hands,
is dragging me into its fire.
—from John Rybicki’s Traveling at High Speeds, New Issues Poetry and Prose (2003)