Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
For Elisabeth Eitel------Il miglior fabbro*

Snow White of course, I love the sort
With sensuous repose
Was dancing on the bar not far
from where I kept the rows
Of Houses Black that snuggle back
and tingle in your toes

“To Liquid's floor” I did implore
“My Lady, come to dream
Please leave your heights and fill my nights
with thoughts of softest cream

(She jumped to me, I caught her clean
and brought her to the ground)

Somehow she knew then, right away, just what her night had found
Another smooth, deceptive fool whose heart could only pound

She bit in spite, hard down in me
A ****** path of entropy

I grabbed her, whispering low and mean
“I'll teach you of the XOR machine...”
She cocked an eye but failed to see
so on I went impatiently
“I'll teach you of the XOR machines
where one and one to nothing come
but all alone are free”

Smiling sly she arced a stream
(with new light in her eyes agleam)
of blood upon the dancing sea
into the noice of girls and boys
with mad emphatic glee

Q.E.D.
When Van Gogh cut off his ear
It was for reassurance that the rest of him could disappear

That illusion of ownership that nerves create
Should have faded with each baby tooth I lost
It didn't though, contrariwise I worried I would extend
Into roads or trees and then feel the tire's friction or the elm's blight

Empathy is a ***** of its own
I pray I never wake up with a Siamese twin
I'd have to care, lest we lapse into mutual sadomasochism
That hilarious territory of bored lovers

The Thalidomide kids might get a kick
out of feeling new arms attached to other people
but that's the exception that proves the rule

After the Vietnam war, some men believed Agent Orange
Had followed them home, alive in newly discovered nerves
Now what odd god must be behind that ****!

Mengele often awoke from dreams sweating and sure
That his patients would learn a trick to generate biological anesthetics
He needed the feedback of sound to really understand the human body
“Prayer or pleading” he used to say with a wink to his bartender after work

Sometimes I worry that my nervous system
Might have a Mengelian agenda of its own

That I am woven into a potential torture chamber seems clear
but then I remember that I can always pull the tooth or cut off the ear
When he was little

My Dad had a battery collection

The rarest, the triple As, were the crown jewels

The Ds were the muscle

The common, double As, were just lazy and plentiful

The 9V was a spy

With these rules my Dad played in various worlds




He told me that his parent's friends

Always looked away quickly when he showed them his collection

They were embarrassed for his parents, he later supposed

“That's something else” they'd say “You could power Denver”




Then my gentle Dad leaned into me slowly

And grabbing my ear with his teeth

He began to growl in a musical tone

That no one ever noticed

That every battery was a human head
I understand this bit of you
(I particularly hate the brain sick too)

I've been around so many wards
Of mewling, lost, head gripping hordes

They are at best the living dead
Forever tucked in their childhood beds

Selfish and terrified, browsing some book
If this was your life, yuck, you'd rather it took!

“All I want is to see him try
To stick to work like you or I”

And therein lies your answer see
Who'd dare dispute “Work Will Set You Free?”

“I earn my sleep...he lays about”

“I bought this house...he lays about”

I've earned who I am! But he's just there
“Enduring” he claims with his little boy  stare

“My love is given on my terms”
“My love is such that it must be earned”

“Grand kids!” Snort  “A human being!”
“Are you not seeing what I'm seeing?”



Slowly I have learned your mind
It's loathing twitch and sadist's grind

You clap and hoot at life on TV
You're one retort “You don't know me!”
How are you ever
Going to get out from under this?
It hunts with its nose
It is brave from lack of sleep

Onions, computers, red cabbage, loss
This tangle of things
Goes to sleep in a knot

Is that you in the picture?
Take as long as you please

Come around back now
Fierce and rambling, blasting a request
For mercy with an air horn
Pointing to an unspecified time and place

A leaflet addresses your problems
You lose your ability to use language
Thoughts stack up but cannot be forged
There is nothing to be afraid of
Are you scared Johnny Reb?
Yeah I guess I am too

With each re-enactment
The grey and the blues
Get under my skin
'til it's just me and you
In our animal colors
All black and bad news

Are you scared Johnny Reb?
'cause I've heard hunting men
Is just one hard ****, then again and again
It is joy past the point of all drugs and all zen

Let the next re-enactment
We enact again
Have the slightest addition
Of two powdered men

I've come to consider you
More than a friend
So honestly Johnny
Between us too men
Let the end of our war
Be decided again
I'm a bad bad man
(I take it in the can!)
There was nothing to run from at all
(but I ran)

I smell the blood in your matted hair
with your nodding to nothingness
and to everywhere

After all I was
wasn't I
Next page