High against the bronze bicep and far off to the left;
Your trigger finger once so fond of pulling off
A couple dozen cozy blackpowder
Rounds into the air, landing softly on the cheeks of
Boys who trembled at the concussive pearls of lead, now
Won over with the nightsweat and dayblood of tomorrow.
So much effort to mold, to shape this fruitless form
With dead eyes the color of dead nails the color of dead shoes,
All bending in a slow testdummy carcrash crack against the bricks,
Unhobbled, tipping stiffly,
With gunmetal lips brushing the pavers, a smirk lapping the joints.
Have we the permission to find parallel uses for that lost time?
If man is part dung-whittled and part sun-etched,
This symbol is thick with miserable death,
And bears a plume of rot as its maquette,
As though the meat for real was packed in fluid alloy,
Left to worms within and carapaced in metal jacketing
Only now revealed in torn splendor, as roped chains
Tug with the tug of their hands, their meat shoulders,
And piping grounding all of it, squealing like house leads
Running with rain. We all are keen to see it all, to tear
Into the dribbles of brackish blood, with dark flecks of fear.
With heat enough the custom folds of all your contours
Will deliquesce to ingot-sweat, finding its own level
Back in elemental purity of drossless ore and rock.
And in a drain your body will be found, coiled in an eddy,
Lost in formless whorls, gyres of history
Bounded tight with myth, the smirk reduced to sauce; the swagger
Slouched, the arrogance epitomized in tales of victory.
And hast thou slain this blabbering Jabberwock?
The hydra sneers and rears its double spine in pride,
The itch of four sprouts snarling at its nascent demise.
12.22.03
