No safer shelter than the trigger.  
Training and trenches teach him: ****
Or get killed. So he masters the skill. He kills
Mosqitoes and cockroaches. He kills
Rats, cats, and chickens. One day he traps

A trembling pup. Gripping a dagger, he grabs
The dog’s nape and rips open its neck.  Warm
And sweet as wine – the blood.  And for blood
He craves. He strangles a suspected rebel before
His pregnant wife. Not a whimper escapes from her

Mouth. Her soul seethes as her eyes clasp the last gasp
Of  a baby lying between her legs – six months
In her womb. He ends her anguish by feeding her
Bullets.  He hacks the neck of  the moribund

Husband. He hangs the head on a pole and displays it
To rot  on the street. And for more blood his heart  
Aches.  He orders his men to burn the village of Las Navas
And shoots everyone that runs.  He chomps off
The ear of a poet and cracks open her skull. Her brain,

His dip. And he feasts on his skill. Until one twilight
A wayward bullet snatches the trigger from his finger,
Finds its nest in his chest. He marvels at how deep
His blood darkens, how fast his blood clots, how tight
His blood clings to life. Then he hears faint footfalls coming,  

Merging with the droning stream. Figures familiar to him,
Bare and brown as the earth  weave a web of shadows
Over his body. And he waits for their hands to carry his own law
Down his skull. But something heavier befalls –
Gazing at the sky for the first time,  stunned by the bleeding

Colors of the twilight, he glimpses a pair of cupped
Hands dripping life into his wound. Into his trembling lips.