it’s a cool tape
someone’s gonna put it on the Web

there’s a lot of silence
punched up with sick sounds once in a while

that’s me yelling "abort abort abort"
by now you’ll know if I heard

Ten people in a room,
drinking beer,
claiming to socialize.

Five open laptops,
seven cell phones in plain sight and frequent use,
long silences bubbling through the chatter.

How intolerable must we all be
that the means for escaping each other
must always be close at hand?

In order to survive
the changing climate,
I shall fight the natural order
and become the extinct dire wolf.
Six foot tall at the shoulder
and a stone match for anything that moves,
I’ll be regenerate tooth and claw
in a land of current rabbits.

Everyone will be taken by surprise.
People will demand proof of my existence
even as I lay waste to the countryside.
Experts will shake their heads and deny it,
victims will point at their wounds,
and while the debate rages
I’ll be licking my atavistic balls
in pleasure over it all
because I know better
than any of them do
how irrelevance itself can lead to
this kind of savage rebirth
Ignore some people long enough
and they die quietly; ignore others
and they come back as the monsters
you dimly recall  which you haven’t seen in years.

One day, after a distinguished history of rampage,
someone will shoot me
and won’t they all be amazed at my carcass:
the stiff fur,
the mange,
the blood on my jaws.
They’ll mount me somewhere public,
I’ll grow dusty again,
and schoolkids will point at me on field trips.

I’ll have a plaque at my feet
explaining the whole damn story…

and a neat little button
that when pressed
will let them hear my howl.

Silence at last.  I’m tired of speaking
and weary of responding.

People don’t understand that
in their voices I can perpetually hear

the deliberate roar of the pistol
through my own jaw;

or rather I could
until a few minutes ago, when

I got home and ran to the bedroom
to take the bullets out of my gun

and stuff them
into my ears.

I can put off my end
as long as I live in the quiet.

Every voice I heard tonight told me I was doomed.
Every deaf moment since I got home has kept that doom at bay.

No one knows I can hear the Scythe when they speak
unless I come out and confess it,

and then they want to tell me I’m lying about it
or that I have missed the joy of living.  No one understands

that I have known that joy,
and it’s that joy that makes me think of triggers and torn bones.

It’s knowing that I knew that all too well once
and that it seems more distant

every time a happy person breathes
or laughs in light of something

perfectly silly
or delightfully small.

I don’t hate them for their joy,
and begrudge them nothing.

It’s just safer for me here in the leaden comfort
of not hearing so many reminders of how distant pleasure is now.

I drill the bullets deeper into my head.
I do it without irony.  I know myself well enough

to know that if ever I decide to use them as they were designed,
it would be the hatred of their noise I’d have to overcome,

and not
of the silence to follow.

A Telecaster’s
what I need

a no-frills slab of easy
made to be played hard

Something venerable
that can sting and scream

Something born to run a straight line
from chicken-picking country

right up a stairway to heaven
(even though I don’t believe in such a thing)

I need a maple telephone
because I’ve got to call London back

I need to write a syrupy note
to all I’ve ever loved

and although my big blond dreadnought girl
is always at my side

I can’t write everything I want to say
with the same pen all the time

So give me the ancient quill
and let me do my thing

my Isley thing
my countless bar-band idol thing

let me lay my head back
in Leo’s arms

let me chop at the rhythm
and let that baby scream

sting
and sing

When a larva pupates
it has a past and a future
and is in neither and in both at once. 

We can’t know
what it knows of itself
as it hangs poised between appetite
and flight.

Those who knew it as caterpillar
and would embrace it
because they loved as it once was
are confused when
love
is unnecessary to it at that moment,
is likely even unknown to it.

All this is by way of saying
that I am sorry i haven’t written to you
in so long. 

I am
pupa:

I appear arrogant, perhaps,
suspended like this, but know that I am
aware of you
as something more
than just a reminder
of voracious days. 

If I do not find a way back to you
when I emerge,

it will not be without
regret that I have had to abandon
that world.