Dirt don't call the lightning
blue or femoral.
In a furious upstroke
my mushroomed spine
explodes in the crown,
splinters of bone
and black lit pumas.
Driven to hell
through a straw
and all the trees
are dead on the road.
My dry lip
adheres to a dry gum
and my teeth are broke
and purple.
The lyrics are garbled
and tongue-spoke.
Guttural curses
cling to my head,
both hands holding
back the temples
of past myths,
lies and discontents.

Marriage of heaven and earth -
strike down, down, down,
that I may shut you up.

Duly noted -
that million dollar baby donation
to United Way
or some other contribution
to whatever charity
the strategists
deemed would
promote the interests
of the body
corporate,
devised as
noblesse oblige,
designed as good
corporate
citizenship,
to veil
the larger sapping
of riches
stripped
from the backs
of workers
hacking out
double shifts
with machetes
and dull knives.

The cook and the teacher,
paid low,
trusted
to feed the body,
feed the mind,
clean,
left unfed and fettered
to the edge of a dime.
Lower down
the chain of demand,
two rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

The CNA, the DNA
of the elderly
trash-heap industry,
scraping by,
just scraping by,
but trusted,
regulated,
called to task
for a stain,
three rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

Minimum wage
daycare slave,
entrusted
with the safety
and well-being
of children,
four rungs below
the garbageman
that swiftly whisks
our waste away.

Iridescence on the neck
of the boat-tailed grackle
is a trick of light.

Much the same
as the swirled acid
rainbow slitherings
of oils on water -
slick - metallic
the call.

Much the same
as the prismed arches,
aloof,
heavy airs slashed
by gut level
blades of low suns -
never there, but chaste
and chased by the eye.

The blue jay hoards
no pigment blue,
but gray conspires
the barbules,

interlocked
to lift the remains
of the speckled shell
under any light or lack,
slackened back,
flashed on limbs and wire:

back to the clutch,
back to the hatch,
back to the wide red cups,
back to the ratcheting call -
the screech of all things blue.

everything paused when you waved goodbye
just going to work

every possible tragedy occurred
on the empty sofa cushion
on the arm of the chair
where one of your hairs
waved and cast the slimmest grim shadow

bella on her bed
pudding-eyed and half asleep
chewed a clump of dirt
from her forepaw
and flit tongued
it to the floor

the coffee un-poured itself from the cup
and I was ****** eastward
in your absence
yanked down the foothills of appalachia
slurred across the bay bridge
smeared like butter on the pancake peninsula
past the flash and clunking plinko machines
past the skeeball thunder and flickering schemes
and a summer week's worth
of crab thrashers and spent grease
stuck in my sinuses
past all the great juggling spectacles
of joy to find myself
ankle deep in some other ocean
breakers hammering to buckle me knees
as you turned right at the top of the street
for another sweaty shift
in the back kitchen
of someone else's dream.

Bob Wilke
excelled at the close up
kind of magic -
that pick a card sort of thing -
great at parties,
when the chatter
is lacking
and the astonished
were a bit off-plumb
and didn't notice he ain't
practiced much.

Now Roy Dennison,
on the other hand,
would pull a maggot
from your nose
if he knew you were lying -
a fait accompli kind of thing.
He always said doves were too big,
too flighty, rabbits nibble his pockets,
and Roy, just too ******
lazy to feed 'em proper.

Emma McFadden,
oh - now
she
had
the apparatus -
that steampunk clinking thing
with exposed gears,
whirling barber poles,
horns that puked blue smoke
and methane, chain,
sawblades and springs,
flywheels and pulleys -
all the things necessary
to rip a body apart
and leave the choking crowd
gasping for more,
always wondering.

Some say they spotted her,
one or two times with a shovel
under that old scraggly sycamore
behind Dennison's place.
That may be the case or
just a bunch of flap, I don't know.
I ain't going back there, though
I do have some ideas
on the supply side
of Roy's maggots.

What a show.
Man oh man, those were the days.
What a show.

O! Praise upon the cloven-hooved beast,
the fawn, the doe, the buck
that bound and warily snip the leaves.

O! Praise upon the moose
its dark muscular tranquility,
slipping out then into shadow.

O! Praise upon the bighorn sheep
who cling nimble to cliffs and know
to climb sideways, cracking
resolved conflicts down
the mountainside.

For blessed are the cloven-hooved,
named and unnamed,
surefooted, fleet, horned and innocent,
that grace the graven icons of demons.