My first word was Give. My second word
was me. I’m from filet mignon out of a can.

I’m 75% Jack Daniels and 1/4 Portuguese table wine.
The only thing my Irish grandfather passed down to me

was whiskey dick. I was baptized in moonshine,
circumcised with a shark’s tooth. I know how it feels

to pull down your pants and wiggle your ass
at truck drivers, to rub your face in the bosom

of pain, to tell a story and see a red flag rise
in the listener’s eyes and keep talking. No,

I never had a problem with parties. It was the party
between the parties that did me in: the festival

in the stairwell, the bathroom stall soirees,
till my brain was as soggy as a spooge mop

in a porno booth, and my grandmother’s heart
was a pigeon I stuffed in a plastic bag

and hurled off a cliff. Yes, I came close enough
to death’s face to smell the formaldehyde

behind her earlobes. But I got sick of feeling
like a million dollars’ worth of cocaine being flushed

down a toilet. Sick of staring at the world
through the mist of chemistry. Sick of looking

for mother in chemotherapy, busting open
my hourglass each night and snorting up the minutes.

Yes, I broke my word so many times, it became
a handful of crumbs I sprinkled at my father’s ankles

whenever I needed money. I’m fine. Everything
is fine. When I quit drinking, the only thing I knew

how to make was a fist. I’m not Irish or Polish
or Swordfish. My homeland is compulsion.

My national anthem plays whenever a drunk tumbles
down a staircase. My national flower is a carnation

blooming in the scrawny garden of a junkie’s arm.
My ambassador will be with you in a moment.

He’s busy repairing the tombstones I destroyed
in the graveyard of broken thrill rides.