If they didn't have the guts

to grab what was right 

in front of them

like a man, he barked,

that was their fault.

He saw the fish,

cleaned them out

right down the gold

in their back teeth,

and made them 

thank him for it.

He vacuumed out the register

with a bent smile,

tore up his tab,

and spat in the face

of the one guy

who had stepped forward

with hesitant justice.

"Go ahead, loser,

take a swing at me",

he sneered,

"put it right here",

as he jabbed his middle

finger

to his chin.

He then put the swag

in a tablecloth,

and laughed as he

stripped them of the

last of their

expired-code

dignity.

It closes in on him

when the last life preserver

has floated away,

and the molecules dance

in his ears,

and distant, unearthly

rooster shrieks

sound their absurd

proclamations of

midnight harem ownership.

There will be no

Get Out Jail Free Card,

there will be no

overtime,

there will be no

recount, there will be no

favors for Old Times' Sake.

And if he has any items

to declare, 

he better get

off the Potassium-Argon clock,

because someday

he won't be around

for them to

not notice.

She was a real pyro,

I mean a rock-'em-and-sock-'em

give 'em both barrels

KAPOW of a woman, 

five feet five, spittin' out nails

like pumpkin seeds,

a goddam piss and vinegar 

QUEEN

ridin' a runaway freight train and

laughin' like a maniac.

She had a body like a knee 

to the groin,

eyes colder than rebar,

and a face that packed more punch

than a friggin' PROM night.

And when she kicked me

face first through the

bar room window,

I was thankin' my lucky stars

that she'd at least left me

one cigarette,

three dimes,

and her number

so we could crank it up

next time

I was in town.

They walk by me

suddenly,

as if they had appeared 

out of 

the miasma of an

all-obscuring fog,

their features only

sketchy in appearance

but filled with portents

and signs, 

sometimes heavy 

with meaning

and affect,

sometimes only

fleeting and hurrying

their way out my

bemused attention.

Some of them can still

make my heart race and my

lost fire flare up;

others are carrying

Rwanda machetes,

ready to make me howl

silently once again, and

still others are mere

elements of a crazy pastiche

composed of the detritus

of the mundane.

They are all suspects

in the Great Conspiracy,

and all of them

are to be mistrusted,

as I make room for new

walkers

ready to surprise me

on other rainy mornings.

No faded monster

from that time 

when our softly naked skin

was open to its

razor wire predations

can be allowed to win more

degraded triumphs

over us.

It cannot be allowed

to reprise its fetid act

again and again.

We must see its face,

and know that it

can no longer reach us

with its scabrous arms.

We have no time to let its

tired, ancient barbarism

drag us away from the

life we have built in defiance

of it, and from those who now

feed off of the love we have

paid such a dear price

to nurture and preserve.

We cannot let it drag us into its

indigo lair once again.

We are bigger than it is now,

and every day we live

in contempt of it,

laughing at it, 

despising its broken grip on us,

is a day when it can no longer

make us cry out

or freeze our legs in place.

We are needed elsewhere now;

we have no time to allow

that which no longer is

to keep us away

from that which can

still be.

A despised, hated empty suit,

grown weary with rapine 

and fog-clouded judgment;

unwanted, useless machines

sitting in joyless snow;

old titans crumbling under

the weight of brazen avarice;

masses living in fear of

being swept into canyons

whose floors cannot be seen;

grasping, clutching appetite,

its open maw obscene with

voraciousness;

warriors in distant horizons,

left to deal with slow motion

catastrophes;

blind "prophets" yammering

poison into frightened ears;

lives dragging on in routinized

mindlessness;

seething hatred straining the

leash of weakening restraint;

paper houses swept away

in torrents of foolish regret;

massive hopes placed on

slender shoulders.

It is the Child

of distant upheaval, having

erupted from Gaia's womb 

with insolent energy,

hot tempered and restless,

a brazen interloper 

in the community of land. 

Blasted into submission

by the implacable depths

and relentless skies,

ravished by raw life,

it was made yielding and pliable,

a malachite gemstone 

surrounded by the arms

of its adopted mother.

Come stand in its 

indulgent night

with me 

and feel the

strength

of its 

gentle infinity.