untitled

Tell your story (to the red-nosed minstrel)

scrape, scratch along

clawing the ground

search for breaks

in the sheen

cobalt armor

layered pattern

back and across

poured out stiff,

insensitive to language

or Alliance

I reach high,

high unseeing

mud coated eyes

I reach high,

high straining

fibers tearing

and knotting

I cannot see

with my face buried

locked down

down, wood

and metal

and clay

and straw

binding

Up,

Up, I reach

streaking flame

igniting my back ablaze

a ritual burning for all to see

My hands fall

they too are blind

and cannot feel,

covered over

week old blisters

hard and hating

crinkling

cracking

in the warmth

find the pink,

living skin

and frozen

blood

Beneath

Curse God

And Die

the soot and soil

welcomes my hands

back home—to the fireside

two chairs

and a scalding embrace

Tell your story

to the red nosed minstrel

so he has a song to sing.

Watch him,

stagger,

trip,

vomit.

Lose yourself in his words.

hey splash around

flaked,

dripping with tobacco juice.

Your Stomach tightens.

In the ash heaps

Ten thousand people lined the streets

to stone me.

They didn't know that I had already climbed

upon my funeral pire and lit the gasoline,

striking the match on the sole

of my foot.

Ten thousand people rushed to the beach—

they heard my singing—

and watched my castles burn

and sink into the ocean.

When it cooled

I could feel them climbing

up and up,

feeling for footholds

in the ash-heaps.

Looking for my bones.

Turning up the black

with spades—

a pickax.

And then, cheering,

they pronounced

that I was dead.

And pushed me

onto the reef.

From the dust

stand at attention and feel the grind

stone at the nape of your neck.

Gradually passing, passing by

you hear the guards roar off

into the night.

And you gasp for air

and recite the assassins

creed

for the benefit

of Mr. Joe Smith

who watched. and waited.

for no one knows.

Kept under the bushel

basket, his eyes

shining.

Blow back petals

across the back of the wind,

feel the rushing, gushing

empathy of the waves...

the pools of light...

Idle back into bed

and.

dream.

of sand castles

and clouded buttresses.

Mr. Joe Smith

sits beside you.

weaving a story

from the dust,

under

your bed.