A dying man does nothing easy,“Lock and load. Let's do it”,said G.W. Green
Right before Jack Pursley sent 3-5 grams of sodium thiopental coursing through his veins
in Texas. Sticking with the states motto it was probably 5. As lethal drugs flowed into his arms, he used an obscenity to describe life, gasped once and made no further movement.
Imagine his brief confidence in the face of this adversity, before the heart’s blood
Settled in the ventricles.
             Some have called such confidence a monstrosity titled, “Hubris”--
Alexander of Macedonia thought it necessary, to cross the turbulent river against fear
-ful odds. For destiny demanded imitation of his exemplar Achilles
Quickly eroded was this by the pleas of Parmenio, who reasons it would be,“failure at the outset.”

Imagine Alexander reciting the words of G.W. Green, instead of heeding to this squelching caution
How quickly we’d throw this decisions bones in the pile, with ******
In Stalingrad & Nixon in Vietnam
All to be shoved in to, a mass grave of faulted zealots.
Covered with soil, bitter compost not to be forgotten
Rosemary sprouts next to a burning
bush in Iraq.

Surely in the distant future historians will find our civilization
Appalling, destructive, gluttony,
Stricken.
Receipts of items that once fulfilled our temporal desires will fill earth
creating a toxic compost for life
To nourish upon
They'll blame us for the decay
And devolution of man
They'll duly note our fascination
With stimulants and violent trends
And most of all, they'll be unable
To comprehend our impotency
our hubris our clemency
They'll construct theories
That moor our cultural malaise
To each recrudescence of tyranny

In essence they will despise our very nature.
Not out of contempt but out of fear that they too will fall
prey to the plague.

Of the hospital
I sat clenching a leopard
filled with beads.

Father beside me
Tapping his chestnut wingtips against
the bloodless linoleum floors.

It was September. The heat oppressive,
Like the Moors toward foes
in the Iberian Peninsula.

Rays illuminated the woes of those ‘round me.
A barrier existed
emanating from within

Fleshed out by a zeal, to not be                                       on one’s own
At the dinner table, as Father responded
to a **** addict’s violent implosion on Nile Street.

At Carmel-by-the-Sea building sand castles to be
--washed away by the tides
on the bay enrobed with fire
Fleshed out by a desire to be

dethroned.

Fulfillment flooded the lobby,
Father ceased his tapping,
A Florence Nightingale lead the way

past bland white doors,
past elderly covered in black crusted sores
past a priest who pours a libation.

In to the room of your entrance,
Nearest and dearest gathered ‘round
the blemished linoleum floor

Warm cries hollowed down
the halls, signifying your existence
Clenching a leopard

filled with beads. (Now in the attic)
Mother Rose freckled and content
Embraced you, as the world still spun

My eyes a maelstrom of red yellow and black,
seeped streams of grey streams of grey
for the loneliness fleeted that Autumn day.