The Idea of Mama

Mama come now (a poem).

I was told to worry about this and that and this, but all my worry is dried up like the trace of a puddle in a dry Indiana Joo-ly.

Mama come now. Mama show me.

Quell the source of my infantile blasphemy.

Make the old adage go something like this: a corncob pipe and a couple flour biscuits.

Eat them for breakfast and make the shit go away — go away, seek trouble, cease

your building for a day.

Every once in a moon, mama, I’ve gotta stop my poeticizing. I’ve gotta lay down

my fickle pen and be a real-life human.

So I sit and make love out of nothing or admire the chin of my love doing something.

And in that moment, mama, there’s no this or that stoking the blasphemy of doing this or that

So in that moment, mama, I wait for Berlin to call.

Berlin, or Missoula, will have left another ball––

Where she’ll need me, someday, and I’ll answer.