Delivered Clean

You've got to separate what they signify from what

they are distinguish

their claimed intentions from the stuff coming

out from their hands and heads The professor of cultural dynamics

taught us this They're disasters in absentia

really when supposedly working

Look at the record:

lost their minds wrote bad checks and smoked in bed

and if they were men were bad with women and if they were women

picked men like that or would go with women

and talked too much and burnt the toast and abused all

known substances Anyone who says

they were generous to a fault putting change

in whoever's cup if they had it on them always room for the friend

with no place to sleep refused to make what they made

in the image of the going thing

cooked up stews that could keep you alive with

gizzards and onions and splashes of raw

red wine were

loyal where they loved and wouldn't name names

should remember said the professor of cultural

dynamics what

messes they made

.

The building will be delivered vacant

of street actors so-called artists in residence

fast-order cooks on minimum wage

who dreamed up a life where space was cheap

muralists doubling as rabble-rousers

cross-dressing pagement poets

delivered clean

of those who harbor feral cats illegals illicit ideas

selling their blood to buy old vinyls

living at night and sleeping by day

with huge green plants in their windows

and huge eyes painted on their doors.