A guy in mid-limbo.  He’s poker chip thin,
a rejected toothpick.  A sapling, really, full of those fruit,
the ones in the song.  A swamp full of teeth, dams broken,
shirt worn inside out in haste, shoes tied loose-bowed.

A sassy fire in a clearing on the riverbank.
A woman not quite girl anymore.  A class-aware
stumbling block.  Her hair’s cinnamon and brass,
a rebellion. A murmur of sticks and speeding.

A woman’s baby rolling home. It’s not yet
a button. A corrugation in a stellar bridge.
A missed apprehension. A face darklit, shadowed fur,
a broken comb. A broken cloth. A break.

It cannot be done
without the proper language;

without the vanes,
the dart cannot strike home.

It cannot be perfect,
must hold a flaw, must fray
the sensible. 

The heart of it
must beat insanely fast
even as its hand is steady.

There shall be a moment of damage
in its center.
A diamond bird in flight
shall see it, fall upon it,
cut through. 

All around it, the sex of ghosts,
and crudely painted jugs holding rain
that was caught in a desert
years ago.

Now, there’s nothing to do
but drink and live.

The chocolate Easter Bunnies
appear to lose their ears gladly
and gladly lose their heads.
They were made
for mutilation.

Some say the bunnies
are a Pagan overlay
on a Christian tradition;
me,
I’m not so sure.

I was born with it
so it’s not entirely my fault
that it has always attracted certain prey
with its deep, salty tang.

It will wait for hours
to shoot something, then
field dress it
in nothing flat
and eat the still-beating
heart.

While it works
it is always silent, but
soon enough,
it returns to its regular burbling,
soon to include
the most recent death
in its ongoing narrative.

What a brave hunter, its undertones
seem to say.  It crows,
I am unafraid
of blood.

I don’t know what to do
about its craving
and the apparent ease with which
it is satisfied.  I just where it goes,
following trails to hunting grounds
that look different at first
but end up being pretty much the same.

Its tales of the gun
are admittedly compelling.
Whatever it fells, it seems, it owns.
Thus I am endlessly fed on raw meat
and sawed bones.

Thus I seem
to savor what it feeds me,
though there are moments like this
where I long for it
to become vegan and tire
of killing.

A Jimson weed
in revolt against its bad reputation
refused to give me
visions.  A mushroom
turned its pouty ball head away
and would not allow me
access to the Outer World.
Even my marijuana tossed
her crumbly curls and denied me
her comfort.

So I played the guitar
and remembered how to feel the strings
under my fingers.  It was so hard at first
to see the music, but if I squinted
it was still there, laid out before me,
a faint carpet runner down a long hall
which led Outside
and there were dragons there still,
still there were drums in the unknown hills above the fields,
I could still smell still the warm funk of the tunnels
as I dug for them in the courtyard outside.

I have no time now to reminisce
about the old ways, how theatrical
the shamanic journey
used to be.
It’s just work now, still a spirit chase
but I run it under my own power.
I follow the dragon where it flies,
capture its fire as it burns,
carry it home in my bare hands
and cool it in the plain air
unassisted — and when I’m done,
I can remember everything.

Candy, the woman
who walks the gigantic pitbull
down Mitchell Street twice a day,
stopped to speak to Ruben
last night
and the pitbull
(whose name remains a mystery to me)
sniffed at Ruben’s leg
then gently tore the pants open
at the seam.

Ruben yelled as if he’d been
ripped himself
and Candy pulled the dog back
so hard it reared like a horse.
It looked confused as Ruben
delivered a potent cockfight kick
to its ribs. 

That yelp
sounded like just another day
in progress, Ruben’s high voice
imploring something untranslatable
to the sky merely adding a flavor to the mix.

I wish I knew these people well enough
to name the dog and know what Ruben said,

but I’m not close enough to the ground here
to understand my people’s pain, how awful
and familiar such incidents are.  Instead I cower
inside when Candy walks the pitbull by
and will not speak to Ruben though I’ve heard his voice
in such an intimate way.  I avert my eyes, in fact,
when I go by his house;
though there was no permanent damage
to him, I’ve learned a little something
about fear, about lashing out,
about the risks of simply living and speaking here.

The principal product of my hometown
is people who want to be elsewhere.
The principal product of where I live now
is chips to be worn on shoulders.

I took a job as a packaging designer
for these products of town and city.
I’d wrap them up in shroud cloth
and wait for ideas.

I’d gather my bitter friends
and we’d brainstorm.  We’d use
the same buzzwords you always hear —
let’s throw stuff on the wall to see what sticks,

or let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes.
We’d bore ourselves silly.  We’d smoke cigarettes outside
in rainstorms and then come in to sit glumly
over our half-finished cups of coffee.

We were really stuck for concepts.  How can we sell
ennui and hostility, we’d ask?  Everyone’s already got all
they need of both.  And we’d try again and again, to no avail.
Soon we lost the account.  We retired to a bar

and tried to figure out what went wrong. 
We certainly knew the market.
We certainly knew the product.   Maybe
a change of scene would help?

Jesus,
it is said,
will kill thousands
in the last battle
with a sword that issues
from his mouth.
This is why I’m not
a Christian anymore:
I’ve heard this sort of thing
my whole life
from the dry-honed lips
of my peers and this Jesus
sound too much like a poet
to be trusted. 
If there’s an Armageddon
some day
I suspect words will be
secondary
at the least,
superfluous
at the most, and God
will find a way to do the work
without intercession
from one of these
metaphor-slinging
cats with a vision of
how dangerous
his words are.