Classic Poem

pounded pounded pounded on the nuthouse door.
fist reduced to blood fingernails coming undone assaulting the iron hide with jabs hooks chops & uppercuts.
bones in the hand just so much loose ice in an icebag hanging at arm's end.
& O the nuts manned the barred windows with their craze-crazed eyes.

bones showing white through the busted knuckles broke the front door down.
then a dead light at an inner door.
what's the matter.
let me in.
what's wrong.
it was Dad bought a Picasso sixty thousand bucks took saw & scissors he cut it up Mother & Child a puzzle in pieces let me in.
no now you better go away.
shaggy worn pieces mercy no let me in.
no go.
please let let me let me in.
go away.
no.
go.

so pounded pounded on the great gate of the federal pen with a ballpeen hammer.
heavy head flying off the handle toward the cons at their checked windows with moon-mean eyes of stir.

it was Monopoly gave Park Place for Waterworks little green houses & big red hotels chance & charity & jeopardy & dice & jail & ruin aplenty.
& at the nunnery pounded on the door swinging a sword.
& O the stitched virgins the sisters bridally prim in pious bifocals averted from the leaded windows & glad gold of a gone throne restored.

was slot machinery bulging pregnant & laboring my way with jolly doses of silver dollars a veritable cherry orchard & plums too & brazen bells & watermelons & local specials.

& lemons.
you know the land.
lemons equal nothing nothing nothing in that land.

& at last of course at the ribbed gates of the graveyard pushed.
it's fingers of tongue & prick that excavate those holes so the warm worms' cold old work can go on continuing.
-uum.

& O the hired diggers with eyes so deep & dirty dark forevermore.
& he fell through the hole to hell that hath no doore.