Mike Davidson

MUNDANE MARTYRS

She's worn the same jeans
for months. The Levi's Shroud
of Turin body canvas recounts
an unplanned pilgrim's progress
of lake-front storms, dreamless naps
in strange doorways, vicious assaults
in alleys, gourmet food scraps
in trash cans, scabs, crabs,
lice, mold, mice, blood, vomit,
spit, piss, shit, ash
to ash and dust to dust.

She wears a wedding band
on her grim gloved left hand
while the craggy right clutches
a book of Thai restaurant matches
bearing one lone bent surviving match
to ignite the twisted Marlboro butt
dangling dormant from leathery lips
like a cocoon in early spring
waiting for the fruition of unspoken
promises--prophecies of explosions
into bright weightless monarch grace
or that grim moth power,
certain in the terrible truth
that every source of light
is a hole in the world--
a passage into the fire--
an escape, which like all escapes,
burns with the unwavering resolve
of a final trap--a new path
into the same old cell.

Floppy paint stained dumpster Nikes
carry her on clown's feet
to a café's window counter
where a tall dark haired refugee
of modeling and retail management
serves her a hot cup
of fresh Columbian darkness
with a smile. Elizabeth waits
on the rest of her flock
with the same Christian democracy
long since rejected by churches
as mortal sin. Elizabeth waits
in second-hand jeans bearing voguish
knee rips and a man's shirt
with wide 1970s lapels, both garments
rebaptized as vintage by a shop
near Sheffield where the past
continually slips renewed into present
tense flash-backs. Elizabeth waits.
They would be mother and daughter,
sisters, women of separate centuries,
inhabitants of different planets.
It's tough to tell. Time, outside
and in, had hidden age,
origin and aura of the garbage
scented sibyl--turning her
into everyone which is the same
as no one at all.

The female gargoyle of Lakeview
suddenly stands, steps out
onto Belmont and begins to shout
about PEOPLE SHOULD BE PUT
IN JAIL WHAT DO YOU MEAN
YOU IDIOT IN A PARKING CAR
IT'S THE GOVERNMENT WHO ARE YOU
LOOKING AT AND WHY WHY WHY
DOES LOVE HAVE TO BE SO
WHO ARE YOU LOOKING AT FUCK
THE COPS THE CRAPS I HAVE
THE DOLLAR FOR MY COFFEE
SO DON'T YOU BE LOOKING
AT ME BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW.

Elizabeth refills her cup,
drawing the Bozo shoes back inside,
where the raving instantly stops,
where sibyl again becomes a lady,
sipping Columbian, puffing her butt,
complimenting Elizabeth's clothes
as being cute. The coffee bearer beams
her thanks and admires the wedding band.
Beneath filth and reptilian wrinkles,
an unseen blush burns without blood.

As suddenly as she ceased
her stream of consciousness yowl,
she vanishes, disappearing into
the moist lake breeze, devolving into
her pre-matter state: her destiny.

Elizabeth tours her tables for refills.
She leaves a trail of smiles,
short lived fantasies and healthy tips.
She pragmatically dances across
her Newtonian ruts. Elizabeth waits.