Poor Magdalena

Magdalena kept her quarters in a Crown Royal bag.

Oh how the pretty lamp lights shone like hard candies on a stick
Full of promises and twinkle
Like the look of so many men
That swallowed down only left her feeling sick.

”Christ if you want to know the truth of it,” as they say
She don’t got no boyfriends… just some guys that smile at her.

She don’t remember what the park is like in the daytime.

The lone star blinks and she don’t care that it’s just a satellite.

Sometimes she feels like she could flip a switch
Like finding the light at 2 a.m.
A sizzle, a flash as the world burns bright
Like sitting at God’s knee
She always thinks,
”Oh Lord. If this ain’t the rapture!”
Full of hope that it is and fear of the same
And wonder - boundless wonder
At where she would fall between heaven and earth
When the next second comes she’s sitting in the dark
Cause the bulb’s just gone bad.

Sometimes she feels like that too.
Like she’s a beautiful marquee full of lights that have all gone bad.
Like the one she’s looking at ‘cause it’s 2:04 a.m. and she’s tired
Of watching the laundromat toss her underwear around.

Sometimes she feels like the security man
Pacing the gas station next door
Arms swinging,
Waiting for no one…
Which is ok ‘cause ain’t no one ever going to come.

She listens to the clouds complain.

She thinks about how Teddy used to sound
Teddy the Gun they called him cause of that time
He tried to rob the old lady with the cane
Who couldn’t understand him on account of his speech problems
About how he kept waving his little ankle piece in her face
Until he figured out she was blind and he got so embarrassed
That he just ran away.
Except he still puffed up when they called him that.

She thinks about how she’d call him
Theobore
when she got tired of him talking
And about Mikey Hot Pants, about Sid
- The ones she’s known that don’t make no sense
And how they’d be great in her memoirs when she’s old

And the lights sizzle and flash and she thinks to herself
”Oh My God. If another bulb ain’t gone bad…”
And quick as you like she realizes she ain’t inside nowhere.
At 2:12 her britches stop spinning, but she ain’t there to get them
And she wonders, she just hopes the security man will check on her
Even if she ain’t there to know.