Freak-Out

Mine have occurred in empty houses

down whose dark paneling I dragged my fingernails—

though big-box stores have also played their parts,

as well as entrances to indistinct commercial buildings,

cubes of space between glass yellowing like onion skin,

making my freak-out obscure.

Suddenly the head is being held between the hands

arranged in one of the conventional configurations:

hands on ears or hands on eyes

or both stacked on the forehead

as if to squeeze the wailing out,

as if the head were being juiced.

The freak-out wants wide open space,

though the rules call for containment—

there are the genuine police to be considered,

which is why I recommend the empty vestibule

though there is something to be said for freaking-out

if the meadow is willing to have you

facedown in it,

mouth open to the dry summer dirt.

When my friend was freaking-out inside my car, I said

she was sitting in the freak-out’s throne,

which is love’s throne, too, so many fluids

from within the body on display

outside the body until the chin gleams

like the extended shy head of a snail! Even

without streetlamps, even in the purplish

penumbra of the candelabra of the firs.

My friend was freaking-out about her freak-outs,

which happened in the produce aisle;

I said: oh yeah at night, it’s very

freak-inducing when the fluorescent lights

arrest you to make their interrogation! Asking

why you can’t be more like the cabbages,

stacked precariously

yet so cool and self-contained,

or like the peppers who go through life

untroubled by their freaky whorls.

What passes through the distillery of anguish

is the tear without the sting of salt— dripping

to fill the test tube of the body

not with monster potion but the H Two… oh, forget it…

that comes when the self is spent.

How many battles would remain

in the fetal pose if the men who rule would rip

their wool suits from their chests like girls

in olden Greece? If the bomberesses

stopped to lay their brows down on a melon.

If the torturer would only

beat the dashboard with his fists.