it's okay, spread the peanut butter thick.   you're back home. sleep 'til noon   and listen to the shape shifters   in the volvo on your way to borrow   foreign movies from the library.       did they teach you french in new york?   did you learn to shave your face close   with dial soap and a steak knife?   how to slickly wipe a sweaty palm   on your pants thigh   before shaking hands firm   with the shadiest show promoters?       i know it's hard for a single person    to fold queen size bed sheets.    you left your reds hat    in the back seat of mom's volvo.   i know it's hard for a single person    to fold queen size bed sheets.    you left your reds hat    in the back seat of the volvo.      she wanted to have it cast in bronze   to be put on display next to your baby shoes   and first buck on the t.v. in the den.       but i knew you'd be back   to eat a bowl of peanut butter bumpers,   to jerk off to the lingerie ads   in the j.c. penny catalogue.   i knew you'd be back.   i knew you'd come back,   to go back to school    or get a job at the downtown library,   the health food store,   painting apartments for ray ritchie,   or to work at the cigar kiosk   at kenwood mall.       it's cool.   just make sure    you get out of here by december.   go to california. go to hawaii.   cincinnati sucks in the winter,   you know that like the bump   on the back of your neck.    it sucks the leaves from the trees,   and by the time the snow is melting,   they always find four or five   bodies hanging by belts   from the train trestles,   or in empty parking lots   slit wrists, turning what's left   of the snow into cherry slushy.       i know,   all beautiful places    are prone to natural disaster.   but being swallowed    by the earth in manilla   beats a slow death   in the midwest.       last night i practiced holding my breath.   my record is two minutes thirteen seconds.   but that was in the swimming pool last summer.   it's easier in water.   just do the dead-man's-float.   let your limbs drift.   don't count in your head.   ignore your pumping blood.   focus on the quiet.