We Are All Lesbians - A Plumbing Poem

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line drawing

page 15

A Plumbing Poem

i go off before the alarm
my paranoid must-not-clock
runs faster
much faster than the Westinghouse one
i wake up half an hour early
to must not--must not
you must not
not
stay in bed
over sleep
be late

in the morning
i trade pipes for pipes
nightmares of pipes
for the reality of pipes
i should wait
wait a few years and write
write my memoirs being called
'my life among the pipes'
or
'i can't get out of the waste stack'
or better still
'out of the water closet and into the sewer'

awake or asleep always pipes
dreams of pipes
pipes that grow
and pipes that shrink
and pipes that wrap themselves around me
like 50 lb. lead snakes
binding me constricting me
but the reality
the real
the pipes not dreamt
but felt
those wonderful cold metals
those hollow tubes