All my energy is going into the election.

I'm a political junkie and right now my on-line life is centered around getting Barack Obama and Joe Biden elected on 4 November. So if my output seems very severely limited, that's probably the chief reason. I hope to post once and a while, though.

He can set down

the rusted, pock-marked razor blade

that he has used so often

to gouge out pieces of his

fear-riven corpus.

He has drawn enough blood with it

to inundate a thousand tight chested

nights.

It is still possible

that he could avoid

its final shuddering cut,

if he can decide, finally

that it is beneath 

his dormant

contempt.

They couldn't see the final scene then,

when they both inhaled in surprise

at that first random meeting,

never expecting anyone to grab them

by the neck with such happy ease,

sensing the presence of

one who was different from all

the rest of the boys and girls

they had frittered away countless

empty hours with.

They talked until three, and he

ran his near-trembling finger

along the electrified fence

of her right hand, wanting to make love

to her right then and there, but

knowing it was too soon,

even though she wanted him

inside of her more than any other

wish she had ever conceived.

Long telephone calls dominated

the days that followed; their desire

overflowed and swept over the

flood plains of their restraint

on their fourth date.

It had all happened so

unpredictably, and now lives

that were only possible in theory

had been launched, and children

loved more intensely than either of them

could ever have known it was possible to

love anything

were drifting casually through

the lived-in rooms of their

warm house.

Did they have any inkling

of the moment

when he would look up

from the hospital bed one last

time, and his eyes would once

again be 20 years old,

and that in that last instant

all that had been

would be swept away

and they would once again be lost

in the soaring newness

of each other's hopes?

He smiles with frozen grace,

letting his sweet glazed mind 

drift into Elysian Fields 

of numb delight,

blocking all poison tipped

spears, deftly tip-toeing

through fields of 

antipersonnel mines

aimed directly at his gut,

wearing wonderfully efficient

earplugs that screen out

the cries of the wounded

until they resemble only

a distant chorus of sighing,

bearable lamentation.

He will live in bouquets 

of vinyl flowers and wax fruit,

happily embracing his narcotized

mannequin and congratulating himself

on bringing the dead tree

Hallmark card

to life so easily.

I could hear the voices

in the after bedtime darkness

but I couldn't quite make out

their smoke-embedded

words, nor catch the drift

of the deep-hued sentences

not meant

for me.

They were  distant signals

from another world,

spoken in a language

that was still largely

Mayan to me,

harbingers of the times

I would be speaking

in tones of reminiscence

or cynical bitterness

or casual eroticism,

sending out my own

mysterious messages

to other open-mouthed

listeners.

Their story began in desiccated hills

and fields stripped bare so utterly
that even the rats starved,
the glorious aftermath
of rancid war, blind revolt, and ravening
soldier-locusts.
Tender minds that should have nestled
in warm repose to hear bedtime stories
saw adults ripping their teeth
into the tough hides
of dead neighbors.
Wandering helpless from the corpses
of exhausted parents,
they clung to each other in the
maelstrom of the dust-covered Gehenna,
their numbers thinned by the machine guns
of the proud, blocking Chekists.
They lived by stealing from the dying,
hiding in the indifferent forests,
and learning to forget the last remnants
of kindness.
Their children, born of rape,
and careless whores,
shrieked with delight as they
terrorized the soft little intellectuals
from Moscow, kicking in the faces
of the politicals who tried to stop them.
They ruled the camps, using kids
as bets in card games, and cutting
off the heads of anyone stupid enough
to object to their missing rations.
When the betrayed soldiers flooded in,
the former rulers were deposed, but their
descendants found new empires in the
concrete slab prisons, and the tattoos slithered
across their muscled torsos to keep score
of every plunging knife and cracking skull.
Now, the great grandsouls of the
original Children’s Crusade
rule the nights with shiny automatics,
collect the protection money from trembling
shopkeepers, and smear the pavement
with the brains of those who have had
a less distinguished patrimony.

He jumps frantically,

trying to see the source of the distant
cries and moans that have
disturbed his magenta night
and awakened the grinning
demons from their shallow
rest.
His heart races in tempo
to his helpless fear,
going too fast in the straightaway,
and heading dangerously
for the wall.
He strains his ears, climbs
on to a ridiculous little
stepladder, and holds up
a sparkler to signal his
profound concern.
Engulfed in Plastic Jesus compassion,
choking tears seize him, and
while walking into his bear cave
he almost trips over
the darkened figure gasping like
a washed up alewife
near the moss-covered entrance.
He once again shakes his head
in noble despair
and unloads a .38 clip into
the faces of the
screeching devils.

It takes all of his effort

to keep the balloon fully inflated,

so that it still casts the same

impressive shadow

on the easily awed onlookers

who throng in wet clumps

below it.

And around his torso he can feel

the cold fingers digging their

jagged nails into his reflexively

clenching rib cage,

reminding him that the day

is approaching

when the last of the gas 

will sputter out

and his altitude

will dip low enough

for all the rubes

to get a good look at him,

and either lynch him,

laugh at him,

or simply bury his

comically withered

body.

No one will mourn you

if, 

in the blindness of your stumbling,

maliciously indifferent,

odyssey,

you let the only refuge you 

will ever have 

slip through your 

idiot fingers.

There will be no solemn line

of pensive, drawn faces,

no whispered expressions

of consolation,

no embraces and perfunctory

offers of "anything I can do."

It has been given to you 

by accident.

You were made from it,

but not for it,

and if you squander

its ageless inheritance,

there will be no rescue,

no escape,

no harbor from your 

self-generated

storm.

And from the outside,

no one will notice

anything different,

if they ever noticed

anything

to begin with. 

I still don't know

how he came through the scalding mist

of his own fear, 

he who was so lacking

in skin that it was as if all of his

huddled nerve endings

were fully exposed to the 

merciless taunts

of a world cheering for his self-immolation.

How did he survive the axe-blows 

to his flimsy skull, the ones that 

rendered him 

a flailing,

helpless refugee 

in the Minotaur's Cave

of his own life?

Was it a world grown suddenly

merciful,

or was it he who grew more

merciless

and resigned to the futility

of hope?

He hurls his vaporous roars

through the dank atmosphere

of his airless room,

tearing out fearful trails of

glistening viscera in 

the fevered landscape

of his imaginary battlefield.

He triumphs inexorably

over foes who will never know

of his humorous, impotent

existence, and the red-hot

explosions of his stammering

Two Minute Hates

stir the detritus

from the bottom of his

cup of ranting misery.

He murders his enemies

in hellishly creative ways,

celebrating his paper-doll

savagery

from the safety of a life

grown rusted

from lack of use.