I can’t go out no more
there is a man by the door
waiting, silently, for my arrival.

But

I’ve put him in my diary
the mailers are all lined up,
on the bed, bloody in the glow
of the bar sign next door

He knows that if I die, or even drop
out of sight
the diary goes and everyone knows
the CIA’s in Virginia

500 mailers bought from
500 drug counters fought for
and 500 notebooks
500 pages in every one

I am prepared

I can see him from up here
His cigarette winks from just
above his trenchcoat collar
and somewhere there’s a man on a subway
sitting under a Black Velvet and thinking my name

If the phone rings there’s only dead breath

In the bar across the street
a revolver has changed hands in the men’s room.
Each bullet has my name on it.
My name is written in back files
and looked up in newspaper morgues

My mother’s been investigated;
thank God she’s dead

They have writing samples
and examine the back loops of pees
and the crosses of tees

My brother’s with them did I tell you?

In the rain, at the bus stop,
black crows with black umbrellas
pretend to look at their watches, but
it’s not raining. Their eyes are silver dollars.
Some are scholars in the pay of the FBI
most are the foreigners who pour through
our streets. I fooled them
got off the bus at 25th and Lex
where a cabby watched me over his newspaper.

I tell you I know

They sent me a dog with brown spots
and a radio cobweb in its nose.
I drowned it in the sink and wrote it up
in the folder GAMMA.

I don’t look in the mailbox anymore.
The greeting cards are letter-bombs.

I have seen strange lights in the sky.
Last night a dark man with no face crawled through nine
miles
of sewer to surface in my toilet, listening
for phone calls through the cheap wood with
chrome ears.
I tell you man, I hear.

I pack myself in ice.
It obviates their infrascopes.
You may think you have me but I could destroy you
any second now.

Did I tell you, that I killed myself last night, now they
will never find me. I’m safe at last.

Paranoid a chant.

Any second now.

Any second now.

Did I tell you I can’t go out no more?
There’s a man by the door
in a raincoat.