Bare Feet and Animal Bones
You could walk on lodestones in your bare feet, or on animal bones
grubbed white in the blistering July sun, or on fence-wire scrolled like
snakeskin after a hard summer rain, or on beer bottle caps and fliptops
left by drifters, mute wives, and FAS children, heads caulked with deerflies and lice, or on a gravel road marrow with feldspar and potash, or on cob tacking and railheads rusted into warps of keel wood
you could not, however, walk on water, or shrug off the pain, or remember a time when life was less complicated and happy, or at least less sad
Battleship Wood and Nails
Do you remember the fort we built between the house and the garage, made with battleship wood and straightened nails, and the hinge for the trapdoor we pilfered from the neighbors garden shed, always catching on a burl of
roof tile, the tile we lifted from the back of the construction man’s truck when he was drinking a Coke and drawing down hard on a Mark Ten, if I remember, Riders In The Storm was playing, and we shared a cigarette I’d
stolen from my dad, and those gray baby rabbits, like plant bulbs, my father etherized in a shoebox full of holes, then chucked in the garbage at the foot of the driveway, and do you remember when it first happened, when your
thoughts went haywire and the voices started, and when you couldn’t remember me visiting, or the fort we built between the house and the garage with battleship wood and nails
For Alan (two)
There was a doll’s head spiff with needles, he said, from too much LSD or chemicals or because I was reading too much Das Capital, they said
Marx would do that to a brain, tarn it to rued butter thick with nonsense or worse, other men’s thoughts and ideas, they said
The voices were never soft, or willing to let me sit quiet in the tally of my thoughts, they were like thieves, men with sticks and stones chasing the mice from the scatter of my thoughts, he said
Your chemistry set is busted, neurons firing at will and with little regard for your wellbeing, it’ll only get worse, they said, and you’ll need constant supervision and a vaccine, which seldom works, they said
I believe in God and human goodness and love, he said, even when the voices caudal my skull, but even then, he said, I’m still lucky enough to know my name and where I live, and the taste of wild strawberries and sun
