Things That May Happen

The day of death was a bright spring day,
that’s the dominant narrative, I fear. I fear
what most people will say, it’s not important
how many men I’ve killed; perhaps
this time what counts is in my heart.

All around you in the middle of the night
people are jerking off with the blind
fervor of a stigmatic, like Saint Jerome
in the wilderness; or plotting revenge
like a crazy Hebrew prophet in thrall
to his thickset god. Hear what they hear
and see what they see: The greater
the grief, the deeper the belief!

This is big if true. Though if it’s not
in our best interest, we will ignore
the bone-splitting noise and the initial
appeals to our better nature. After all,
we’re at war and free from restraint.

Only when the intimate clips are emptied
and all the bleeding stops, we’ll remove
our fur-lined panties and rub our frigid
asses together for warmth as the struggling
Russians, taking a cue from the comedy
of tragedy’s lingering death, used to do.

Remember, ages ago, when MTV was new,
and then Home Box Office, now known
as HBO? It was a time of incredulity
and I was so damn impressed with all
that pseudo-information, I converted
on the spot to banditry and bellowing rages.
Ask your Bible to explain how this is making
us safer; everything that never happened
is in its yellowed totalizing pages.

The weeping prophet says everything
that can be said, in the eddies of night’s
white noise, how early man should be
smothered in the crib, so that’s what I did,
no trouble, neither form nor function
rules, although I didn’t know until later.

School of Fish