Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DESTINY, by JANE MILLER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DESTINY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I am eating cold chinese
Last Line: I love you.
Subject(s): Alienation (social Psychology); Drugs & Drug Abuse; Estrangement; Outcasts


I am eating cold Chinese
in Joy's friend's flat.

I have been trafficked like a drug
planted by a child in Oaxaca,

like the story you are happy
without me, a lie I believe

you believe. And I am traveled
like the mercies on Telegraph,

the streetlamps burning down
the throat of this thoroughfare in Berkeley,

which gets us off
where I lived in the sixties and now

see my name in a window
and find its theme

useless in the act,
where had I not been

so privileged then
I would have had hope

well-humped for a quantity
of uncut drugs.

Out of the city
on Joy's cocaine

where it's always the freeway & the hour
the bars close & no English spoken,

where men chain to each other
as to an idea, say, that prayer

is as useful as a condom
against the current cancer,

here is the black Mercedes
of an acquaintance, top down,

and with the stars tight against my body
like a drunk I am singing

because in a war you taught me
your people flaunt a joyous will.

You who have raised fairness
to an exquisite pitch

which sounds like the wrong gear,
is it fair

to go on as the everpresent
red light we run

parts its mouth for a tongue,
three queens high on Stevie Wonder

crying Where were you when I needed you
last winter?

Now that it is morning
and the only person I know

drives by in his cab,
my name on his red lips the sun,

I call back
every minute the speed of the hours

of the days of summer, Friend,
not naming him, remembering his name,

and that's how it's been,
one with the universe,

blanking out at the Art Institute,
an expensive drug,

piano-brained, cleared to black and white
like a spaceship to another galaxy, MTV,

while you are happy with someone
somewhere there

is the same crying and laughing,
two peasants,

the one you are and I become one
day when we aren't dead

to each other. I hear the story
of a stripper from her mother,

how she'd studied with the National Ballet
that when the lights go on you don't

pretend, you're alone.
I love you.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net