Gary Kay           Dania Beach       (Barbra Nightingale)
The Muse Goes Rogue

Write as if your life
depended on it.
Forget the body count.
Could happen in the kitchen, bathroom
forest, playground, or graveyard
where the epitaphs began
to call.

You’re in luck, you’re cursed,
you went left instead of right.
And now you’re in the middle of your life,
in a deep dark wood
where Virgil’s searching for a map
Columbus lost.

You’re back at home,
with leaking pipes and startled walls.
Your mortgage sleeping on the couch
and in the fridge a cucumber that speaks in tongues.

Someone’s knocking on the door--
a saint, a criminal, plumber
pedophile, a nun.

Let them in, let them in. 
You have no choice.