Mainline Protestants
are the moment
you decide you do
indeed have to poop
Warning Conspecifics
Lead build up
skin concrete and teeth.
Five of us swung pipes
held them in the air
listening to the wind whistle
One end of a tin can
telephone screeched
it will never work
but we already had
our backs turned
I shouted ahead
invert the binaries
we are all victims
of our own ambitions
and the blackbirds whistled
the same from the tops
dying trees lined the street
an alarm call
a response to danger
Blackbirds belong to the thrush
family Turdidae sing
between the months
March and June they do not
flock together
are known to be fairly aggressive
they protect their nesting
spaces with some ferocity
the life expectancy of a blackbird is 2.4 years.
The tin can caught
up and slipped us rancid
toenail clippings in a plastic
baggy opaque yellow
white. we accepted the gift
as a project a challenge
with piece scraped
together we built our reverberation.
A marble floor
a stone cathedral ceiling
chandeliers crystal polish
covering polish i stood.
our shadows bloomed
from a single point I reached
out to the booming can
bulging brown paper bag in hand.
The cylindrical string hung
can pulled a snow globe
out of the bag. our gift.
inside a burning house of
the enemy.
when shaken up the decaying
toenails fell like flakes
without the consideration
of extinguishing flames.
We were not burning
I was not on fire
The can hurled our gift
to the floor
one million glass army ants
shattered into being
scattered under tables and fell
into cracks of the polished marble.
eyes hung wide
saloon doors never swung shut.
M yelped at us
throw our bodies at the analog
apparatus we stood still
G muttered
it expressed nothing more
than its wish for sleep.
Empty light bulb
boxes nailed to walls
under the arched stone ceiling
the flimsy boxes hummed
static honey soaked bumble
bees swarming fruitless hive
the sting held poison
dug itself into tips of each toe
stabbed itself under my nails
crept through veins
numbed the calloused balls of feet.
a foot print in fresh cement
There is a difference between calloused and numbed.
The poison stabbed wooden
stakes into muscles
climbed up legs paralyzing
deadened and useless
My body sank into a quicksand
motion of each appendage slowing
stop from bottom up.
Quicksand survivors say that as you sink
deeper muscles begin to freeze
as the muddy quicksand hardens around the body.
My legs molded solid
cement blocks
chest began to feel
a cave in.
Fell a toppled statue
a monument of forgotten
lying still
marble floor.
B howled,
forgive them
body crumpled
N curled motionless
ball gasping
farewell.
As solution began to immure
the walls of my brain
the roots of a tree
grabbing hold of fertile
soil i said nothing.
The tin can telephone opened
a hardcover book to velvet
bookmark toenail yellow
some marble removed
small square
shallow hole
the can signaled for the bodies
to be buried.
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