I get it—we’re done. But where is the patch
to slap onto my left butt for the slow release
from the if-only-I—if-only-I DTs?
 
I’m a robot vacuum cleaner—Vroomba, 
Vroomba-ing in a maze of memory—
sucking up here the pills of what I said,
there the needles of what I didn’t.
 
I’m rolling out rolling paper,
laying in line after line of what got aged, 
dried up, crushed between us.
I’m licking the edge of our days; 
striking the match.
 
I am your Babylon, your Gomorrah,
puffing out cartoon bubbles
of zingers, smoke rings
of come-backs.
 
Turn around—just once—
give me something to chew on—
Nicorette, Lucy, Habitrol—
to unhook me from making up 
words for you.
                        

What’s what when I’m who-knows-where?
Am I forking the asparagus on my plate
at the ashram?
In my mind, I’m back home, instead, mulching 
winter roses. Cloneless, I span geographies: 
 
stab an asparagus spear in Lenox, MA,
and I’ve thought myself home to Livingston, NJ
two hundred miles away—
my shoulders hunched over a shovel, cultivating
wet compost, my gut
                                    
cranking enough acid
to digest a yard of hay.
Is it any different, forking 
or pitchforking when, 
when I am back home mulching those roses,
 
the get-it-over-withs hit—and I’m riffling catalogues 
for another gardening tool, 
something with more tines,
better balance, some power-something 
so I can get the yard done,
 
and Houdini myself back into the ashram’s 
Olympic-sized whirlpool?
Oh, if only I could
bring this poem around
to the asparagus…
 
but I’m neither eating asparagus nor gardening—
the scenario above happened twenty years ago—
this is my usual growing more mental legs
than a butt can organize. Writing this 
is another other and else
                                       
—Go-Go Goddess Durga that I am—riding her lion,
reaching a thousand arms fore, aft, googly-eyed,
tongues lolling—doing my Stations of the 
Not-Here—dragging around 
a rake for what is
                        

When I ask, “When can I see you again?”
you say, “Let’s just be spontaneous.”
Is it code? Am a burden, you’ll fit in
if you’re bored? Worse, a put-off?
 
You treat me like a Hilfiger button-down shirt, 
price tags dangling in your closet, sleeves empty;
collar still pinned, front creased against the rub 
of other clothes—shuttling in, shuttling out; 
the piece idling for the party or the match to jeans
that never happens.
 
I want to be your gray WalMart tee—
pilled, dark armpits, collar fraying;
warm from you, and moist; your armor, 
your pet, your disguise; running, eating, 
sleeping with you without changing for days.
 
Waiting for your cue is the dues I pay 
for being “special,” as you call me—
an impulse buy waiting in the supermarket queue;
the one held in reserve, sucked into 
its shrink-wrapped cellophane—
care instructions irrelevant.