John The Bastard Prays As Night Falls

All in now,
admitting

to being a big bad
boomer with a
bawdy voice,

callout captain,
dwelling dimmer,
electric eel tongue
flung free,
gagging on the gape
of my own mouth…

sharp and flat
applied as necessary…

They didn’t give me
this name for nothing —

bastard.
Bastard!

I didn’t know my father,
my mother never knew me,
so I’ve made myself up as I went along —
music to my own ears,
note on my note,
strung up and burning open or closed,
roar of child fantasy of power in my vein,

you’d better hope I never come into my own
interrupted passions
and longing —

my head rolling off my shoulders,
my body caked with sweat and dirt like fur,
no longer quite human but geographic,
my own country, my own continent,

and pray that you don’t live here when that happens…

for I’m hungry,
I sing my hunger,

and you look like nothing but a meal.