The Naked Poem

A naked poem showed up on my doorstep. I was shocked,  to say the least. Thank God, my husband wasn't home. I told the children I had company and they needed to go to their rooms, and then I reluctantly let him in.

"What the hell is this about?" I asked him. "You've got some nerve walking around here like that. This is a respectable family neighborhood." He hung his head in shame and said,

"I know, I know, but you've just got to help me!"

He went to sit down.

"Not on my sofa!" I looked him straight in the eye, "What do you want from me?"

"I was hoping for a metaphor, maybe two, or some colourful imagery, maybe. Just something to wear around, you know?"

"Oh! So, I'm supposed to just whip up a metaphor, custom made, no less, on the spot, just for...who are you?"

"I don't know" he said sadly. "He never gave me a title. "Gee, you make it sound so cheap."

"Well, it's not cheap. Have you got any money? You know, we poets are pretty gosh darned sick of writing for no money."

"Um,  no. Sorry."

"Oh,  Jiminy crickets!" I exclaimed. I knew he had me. I couldn't let this poor naked poem walk out of my house to wander the streets at the mercy of the elements, barely a rough draft, a subject of ridicule, a loiterer the police might even take into custody for indecent exposure.

"Where'd you come from anyway? How'd you end up on the streets?"

"Well, my poet was a heavy heroin user and he got some really pure stuff and bang! He was gone. He'd just started me."

"Crap." I said. That meant I couldn't just give him a line or two and send him home. Damned druggie poets! Why couldn't they just drink and smoke pot? Why did some have to take debauchery to the limit and go for that ultimate high; death? Greedy bastards. I had sympathy for them but now this mess was in MY living room.

"Okay, well you're just skin and bones, but let me see what you've got."

He started twitching, an affectation of his author, I presumed, and his eyes got buggy and dead all at the same time and he spoke in a nasal voice,

"The universe."

I sat there waiting for more, thinking, this is one helluva long dramatic pause. But he said nothing. "Is that it?" I asked incredulously. He nodded miserably. "Well, no wonder you're so lost." Jesus, a junkie's final words. Ironic that he was attempting to contemplate the universe when his world had more than likely shrunk to an addict's obsession with money for drugs, finding drugs, buying drugs, using drugs, lying about using drugs, hiding drugs and thinking about them when he wasn't able to do them. That's a pretty small world operating on a pretty tight schedule. "So, he left you with two lousy words. One is a complete throw away and the other is so vast, you can't catch it or pin it down long enough to step inside it, in any tangible way. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that you are naked.

"Listen, kid, I'm going to be honest with you. The best thing for you to do is to just quietly crumple up and hop in a bin somewhere, because your prospects are not good."

"Oh, please, no! I don't want to die! Please!!!"

"You're half dead already! Your author barely started you and then kicked the bucket, ok? What am I supposed to do? Finish you? I don't feel inspired to write about the universe right now. I've got dinner to prepare, two kids who need help with homework, and a husband who already thinks this poetry hobby of mine is a flaky waste of time. Is he supposed to come home and find Mr. Junkie's naked two word disaster sitting bare assed in our living room? I don't think so."

"Just write something I could wear and be. Anything! You write so much- the words just come out of you like crap out of a monkey. I know you could do it!"

"Well... you flatter me. Like crap out of a monkey? Maybe we'll use that since you thought of it."

The naked poem grinned and it was a hideous sight; all teeth, sinewy flesh and cartilage. He was pleased with himself despite my sarcasm.

"Okay" I said. "Don't touch anything, don't move,  don't sit on anything. I'll be right back." I dashed to the kitchen for paper and pen and was back in a flash. He was looking at portraits of my children.

"Are these your kids?"

"Yes. Don't touch them, please."

"They're really cute."

"Okay, here goes. I don't want any complaints. I'm the artist, got it?"

The naked poem held up his skeletal hands and said, "Okay, whatever you say."

I bent my head and started writing.

 "Okay" I looked up a minute later.

"here goes:"

The universe sucks, said the junkie,

My big banana, said the monkey,

Your yellow crap's flying!

So what, man, you're dying,

In time noses smelled

something funky.

"A limerick?" he said with disappointment. "Isn't that what it is?"

"Yes, it's a limerick. What of it?"

"Well, those are silly... and bawdy... and even raunchy. There's no dignity in a limerick."

"Excuse me",  I said with great annoyance, "I told you I would do this for you ONLY if you allowed me complete artistic freedom. Otherwise,  no deal!"

"Yeah, but I don't want to go around wearing that. People will laugh at me."

"That's the whole point, limericks are supposed to be amusing and trust me, it'd be a big improvement over what you've got going on now- which is just plain scary."

"But you wrote that in, like, less than a minute."

"Listen up, naked boy, I am not about to start rattling my muse's cage so she and I might labour to bring, by sweat and toil, a masterpiece, into existence, for you. Got it?"

"I guess I just really don't like limericks. I mean, I'm not even Irish."

"You have no ethnicity! You are a two word poem- if anything, you are universal- so anything and everything applies to you and vice versa. Are you really that dense?"

"Hey! I'm not stupid. I just appreciate beauty. Is it asking too much for you to string together a few words, something pretty that I could be proud of? I've seen you write pretty poems about the moon and stuff."

"How have you seen my poems?"

"My junkie author had some of them."

"You are really pushing it here, buddy, you know that?"

"Please? Something short even, but pretty?"

I took pen to paper again.

A naked poem cast

into vast universe

to dress itself in stars,

burning metaphor

of moons held close

against cool skin

too long alone,

baring hands' silence,

lines imprinting skies

 with yearning imagery,

 imagining seas sweeping

meaning into empty fields

of nonexistent sleepers,

dreaming warmth's tidal

wash awakening

bathing naked singing,

casting nets of poetry

into mind's deep.

I looked up and read it to him. A look of pure joy came over his changing face. Where there had been only bones with scraps of flesh, the full contours of a handsome face emerged. He stood broad shouldered, thick wavy hair, soft brown eyes looking into mine with gratitude. He was well dressed in casual but slightly tailored attire. As my eyes snuck a peek up and down, I thought, what a fine looking man. Then suddenly, I heard my husband's car pull in the driveway.

"Quick! This way!" I grabbed him by the hand, pulling him through the house to the back door and shoved him out. But he just stood there staring in at me with love- for a lover or a mother, I couldn't tell which, but I told him to go at once.

"How can I ever thank you?"

"Don't. Just go!" I slammed the door closed and quickly moved to the refrigerator to pull out the fixings for dinner. My husband entered through the garage door and the kids came charging down the back staircase noisily.

"Busy day today" he said to me.

"Oh? Are you hungry?"

"How's that novel coming along?"

"I didn't work on it today. I wrote a short story and a couple poems."

"You should work on the novel. Those others will never pay."

"I know, you're right."

"I'm going out at seven, to the game. Remember, I told you?"

"Oh, alright."

"I'll probably be late. Don't wait up."

"I won't."

I wondered where my unnaked poem was. Maybe he was going to the game as well. The game. The universe. It seemed to me there was a connection. I fed the children, did the dishes and then sat looking out at the moon and stars. Then I wrote another poem.