Life on Mars

Tarantula

Far from Scythian
Females, in
The Amazon-
Jungle of monster-
Leaves, where
Nobody severs
The right breast
To make the bow fit,

Little-clad
Men-folk eat
Tarantulas. Held
Between two sticks
Over flames that burn off
Leg-hair, the
Salty meat sizzles
And steams.

Tang and season are as
Foreign as a Visa card
Or an army helmet. But
Tarantulas abound. Crack
Open
The crustacean shell
For the jungle-
Candy.

An entomologist on CBC
Said you cannot compare
The meat to anything--
Not to rabbit or chicken:
Tarantula is to tarantula
As bullets are to bullets
And hate is to hate.

These people love tarantulas.
They love the spicy
Meat.

---

The Germans From Dortmund

The infertile beast
Embarrasses the Itcha Mountain-guide
Before two eye-rolling Germans
From Dortmund.

It lies on a strapped-on canvas bag of
Food and pots,
Glaring as only mules
Can glare.

"Gittum!" the bow-legged,
Horse-held guide
Demands of the one-eared collie
That then darts in,
Nipping a foreleg,
Barking,
Nipping a buttock, then
The nose, barking more,
Always drawing back just in time,
Avoiding the twitching mule's
Death-teeth.

*

Twelve years after
The Germans had returned to their
Homeland of dying Black Forest,
And after the collie had lost some hair
And molars,
It forgot--
Forgot as it edged a switchback,
Passing the grey hind legs.

A hoof caught it broadside,
Knocked it spinning, howling,
Into a 100 foot deep gully--
The mule's left ear twitched
When the thud came.

The mountain-locked old man had stopped.
The mule hadn't.
The old man didn't yell--
Oh, he nearly did:
That was his dog!--
But he remembered,
Like the grey mule,
He remembered that trip
With the Germans
Twelve years ago.

---

Skipping Stones

Across the metallic skin
The shale skips,
Wounding the gentle stream
As if a sniper shoots true.

Again and again,
The hunt continues,
.22 slugs into an
Elephant's hide--
Blood-angry it cries--
All inside the hunter's eye.

Finally, a smooth, flat rock,
As black as a beetle,
Follows a Gatling row,
Exploding the sun-fired,
Cold surface,
All the way to the other
Clam-clattered bank.

The bare-chested boy rejoices,
Glances at the sun-ball,
And smiles at the wind.

---

I Have Never Traveled Beyond

I have never traveled beyond
The crack of gunfire;
O, I've visited backyard swimming pools
And steamy swamps
And mountain-locked lakes where
Dragonflies turn at 2.5 G's
And dance
In mosquito-air
And shore-side ballrooms of
Green.

I've seen them outperform
Timid damselflies
(That rest with upturned,
Not sideturned, wings),
In 60 mph sprints
And moment's-notice backward-, forward-,
Sideway-, or hover-steps.

30,000 images to 80% of its brain-mass
Locate mosquito-meat at 60 feet
At dusk--
And 24 frames per second of "In Love and War"
Are still-photos
For this sniper extraordinaire,
This metallic flash of blue
Or green or yellow.

The wet larva,
Sometimes after years of skin-altering,
Settles on a reed;
The change, the growth,
Like the workings of testosterone
In a boy's blood--

Watch the skin along the thorax split:
A new life,
A new hunter of aphids and beetles
And tiny frogs,
A new sniper in Philippine-
Canyons,
A new jewel for ponds and
Riverbanks--
A new insultingly-named
Helicopter
Within the zing
Of bullets.

I have never traveled beyond
The crack of gunfire,
But I have seen dragonflies
Everywhere.

---

The Creek

                               Baker Creek floods
                                      naked roots
                    of stick-men trees,
                                 and skull-smooth boulders
     left by the Great
                                              Deluge.

It gushes through
                         gorges, into gravity's apathy,
           hauling muck,
                                    as spinning fists attack
              the girls' playhouse--
       four years on a bed of
                                        stones--
           reducing it to amputated
   timbers
              and aborted shakes
                                          (cedar).

   Baker Creek mangles
                               our tulips,
                   swallows .5 acres of
                                        topsoil,
   and spreads like
                                 Swine Flu
   through
                         our
                                              blood.

---

The Insomniac On A Military Base In P.E.I.

Bullet-birds,
Flashing by a streetlight,
Picking off moths.

I don't like them,
But I did my job in
Liberia and Turkey.

In our bedroom,
I rest elbows on the
Lead paint-window sill.

"Don't sand that stuff,"
The sergeant said.
"It'll make you lose
Your marbles."

I take a deep breath;
Birds dive out of darkness
And then back in:

I'd like to
Shoot them.

My wife stirs behind me:
"What are you doing?"
"I can't sleep."
"Oh."

And then she falls back
To sleep.



previously published in Fresh Ground (USA)

---

The Lineage

Assyrian jaw-hooks
In sundry bleeding;
Such fish
On a clothesline.

This march of joy,
This lineage of Nimrod--

Celebrated with wine
And roasted flesh
And laughter.

This was the day
Samson lost his eyes,
And the Waldenses their blood.

This was the day
Another Canaanite
Shot a bloody arrow
Through some man's
Liver.

---

The Storm

Howling wind,
Rattling windows
Like Ginsberg,
Pounds cold into every
Naked bush
And gasping tree--
A spectacle of
Clawed fingers that
Maul bare skin
And flags that
Tear at Legion-poles
And pagan lights
That implode
Like the USSR.

Hear it howl
Like a gut-shot beast,
Looking for a place
To die.

---

The Wise Man

He wears
A cone with outdated pictures of
Moons, stars, and planets,
And he carries
The bloody head of a cow,
Like a blind Edomite.

But it's not a dunce cap
That he wears,
And no one calls him a bad boy,
Nor makes him sit
In a corner.

He calls himself
A Hindu,
A Buddhist,
A Christian.

He stamps out a cigarette
In a half-filled ashtray,
And grins a quarter-moon of
Nicotine-scum.

He reads Nostradamus,
Which he quotes
Like a zealot
Between gulps and guffaws
At whiskey-parties,

But he prefers his own predictions,
And he likes to feel drunk
More than he likes to drink,

And he loves to quote Solomon,
And dream of the Queen of Sheba
Visiting him too, one day,
To marvel at his
Everything.