proud buck
frozen, close
heart in my
cross hairs

I squeeze
the trigger.
nothing
happens

except birdsong

as if
they know
some doe was saved
from widowhood

by a
mystic
misfire

I spent my boyhood avoiding
      the disgrace of my differences.
Creating alternate empires that
      I ruled with stoic passion.
I gave out negative vibrations, as a boy,
      to control the level of association.
Built walls and lived within them,
       perfectly encased in sarcastic wisdom.
Does not take too long to understand
       that being yourself is not suggested.
Eager advocates educate the boy that his
      differences must be suppressed.
Be the same. Be the same. Be the same.
      Moulded and conformed, unaware
of the boyhood desiring to think for self.
       I spent my boyhood reading books
that opened libraries of imagination.
      Absorbing the solitary creations
of so many magnificent lives. They presented
      me with echoes of alternatives.
I never have understood the slicked back
      membrane of uncentred filters.
Solitary self-confinement made so
       much more tickled sense to me.
I passed out scented cigars of me
       to ear-drums inclined to not listen.
They agreed to, and supported,
       the numbness of not thinking.
Letting the self-declared prophets
       dictate how we must believe.
I spent my boyhood being the boy
      that did not fit the paper model.
Set it on fire. Set it on fire. Let the
       message always be that a man
must indicate his own set of standards.

I remember that spring
That summer
I was asked for color
You have forgotten your gloves...

یادم می آمد
آن بهار را
آن تابستان را
از من می خواستند رنگ بزنم
...دستکش هایت یادت نبود

for I ate all my peas,
minded my masters at school,
then learned to march manly,
and straight

to these trenches
that surely are maps of hell;
if there be such a place
beyond here

in this dead, grey pasture,
pocked by shells, and body parts
strewn about like pieces of a puzzle
that don't fit

Father said go, make England
proud, but I know you would not wish
this fate for me, or any of the children hiding
in these pits, waiting for the command

to become fodder for the Gatling gun,
the cannon; you would shed cataracts
of tears for all of us, if ghosts above
yet weep for the living

the ****** who will soon join you,
though none know when; surely you
will hear me cry your name, the way I have
seen them all do, with their last breath

She jammed her tongue down my throat
and the taste took me back to simpler times
truth be told, I loved it, her kiss reminds me of my favorite ice cream
but it leaves a bad aftertaste, it's a killer addiction, like poison
she slowly eats me alive, I'm addicted to the heartbreak....

Is the idea of you, it,
is it, really you

©  2017 Jim Davis