Displaced Ode 

Into each space I stuck
a word, then something else
 
like a cup left out in rain. Often
they were misconstrued, my
 
offhand remarks or lies. So I took 
a day job: first I learned to yield, then
 
held up the Yield sign.
What mattered was the repeated
 
gesture of brushing off or
shooing, what is sometimes called
 
displacement. I knew the ode was drifting
past where I could rescue it,
 
and I pitied everything I couldn’t
hold inside it, all the abandoned things
 
and phrases, shirt, glue gob, tiny spider.
That’s why I let some stranger
 
pull my lips apart, pour in
some sounds and stroke me
 
till I swallowed. I mean I’m not
the one who made me rehearse.
 
Who bade, then made me sing.