Ritual Around Food

The aromatic sway of oven warmth gathers the wage workers around a small dinner table,
Dinner Rolls!
Get the butter first! Cut the roll open and spread the butter. Close the roll and let the butter melt into the wheat.
Fill up that glass of water and turn the roll into mush.

First course.
Shepard's Pie!
Get the gravy! Pour the gravy over the mashed potatoes and mix it all up so every bit has a little bit of everything,
Fill up the glass of wine and indulge in a sweet intoxicant.

Main course.
Fried Chicken and Green Beans!
Get the salt! Grab the chicken breast and sugarcoat it with salt and eat like a carnivore. Eat the green beans in between bits of chicken.
Grab a beer and get ready for some sporting events on the television.

Dessert.
Ice Cream Sundays!
Get the hot fudge and smear it over the top. Next grab the whipped cream and spray it til the can is empty.
Get some warm milk and a glass of water because its almost time for bed.

Object Assignment

My eyes have adjusted to the up close, narrow sighted nature of my slavery,
My freedom exists in a compact world with the diversity of rocks, and sometimes I take myself there,
but awaken to the screeching sounds of my servitude,
Where is my freedom but in darkness? Was I once a fragment and now whole? Then who created me but my master? Or do I return to my home when I am most broken?
There is no beauty in this, no coloration that can guise my cleaved soul. My residue I leave is magnificent to behold. But in order to display my colors, I must be grasped with vigor, broken and drilled, my life is between a rock and a hard place.

Sound

The War Drummer
The War Drummer plays his snare in a cloud of gunpowder,
staccato hits careen across the Virginian rolling fields,
a snare never needs to reload,
the stoic face of a war drummer.

Never shoot the War Drummer,
To kill a mocking bird,
He only wears a cloak,
And keeps the rhythm for the air born cannon balls.

If the War Drummer is shot,
it should be in a crime of passion,
for if the drummer falls to his knees,
War is now in chaos!

Vestibulary

The Flag
A flag which snaps in a brisk breeze,
weighs a land so vast,
Lost in an age of glory a long time ago,
To be carried with the current of leaves in its funeral persession,
And resurrected for its perennial nostalgia.

The Suit
His musk is humble, but stains the wallpaper,
A rough sandpaper for a beard,
He buys top shelf pungency, to pour onto the floor,
The baritone voice radiates off walls, and gets undivided attention from across the room.
Everyone asks, "where can I get a suit like that."

Oil
That axle that screeches,
the black soup sprays violently,
the gore within the internal cumbustion,
the mechanic wears a small black veil,
cradles the engine in his arms. 

That Smell Model

ey, what is that smell

walking off the prestine grass,
bandaged and brusied, with a slight limp
toward a counsel of elders
pinching their noses,
at the cost of reputation for their pawns.

Bright lights and brown dirt,
it gets between the teeth
and irritates like a popcorn kernel
the sweat flows from my forehead,
but one drop does not smell alone.

Grouping together for that one push,
22 bodies pressed together
we should faint if not for our stubborn demeanor,
we're lucky the grass is already green.

when the ball touches the try,
we raise our arms in victory,
and the crowd gasps and groans,
by the smell of victory.

That win, the feeling of supremacy
is lost on the bus ride home,
we all reminisce of the try that won the game,
and loathe the trip home with our companions or wretched odor.

We scurry to the shower
unwavering in our bashful masculinity,
to counter our stench with aromatic perfume.
Vomit is not uncommon, but discouraged before
the cascading water.

That smell of rugby.

Poetry...Poem?

Today a poem should strip away the clothes of the contrived working man. It should devolve the clean shaven, kempt, politically correct, briefcase tossing man into a beared neandertal. Rip the souls out from the polished black leather shows and have him feel every jagged stone he steps on and how much it hurts when it pieces the flesh. All in all, it should make him feel again.

A poem should talk about life and pain, death and joy, indifference and ignorance. A poem should derive its passion from the subdued emotions most of us take for granted. A poem should rekindle old love, and new lusts. the uncensored David, the cloistered Mary, the wind that whips like a slavemaster around the waist and leaves a deep scar.

A poem can make a stoic man cry. To break down the Iron Curtain and add white and blue to the sea of red. It can liberate a people who for so long wanted to write their own name or just know what it is, then revise it into a silhouette of past tribulations. A poem inspires the illiterate to read and the literate to teach. It crushes the burden of Ionic pillars and elevates the yeoman to heroic reputations.

Once it has been interpreted, a poem should be buried and die. Giving a void for new poems to inspire the new yeoman. The gravestone should be as ambiguous as its context and the poem will lie and wait for transubstatiation into another body. Like a lone spider in the corner of the shower, waiting to be acknowledged before its inevitable drowning. To circumvent the drain with the water as it sings a drunken sailors song, before entering into the black fluid abyss.

A poem is the only antidote to supremacy, the lone potion to wash aside Marx and Locke and touch the heart like an aesthetic hand. The perfect concoction of cologne and perfume, transexual and open-minded, from San Fransico to Austin. To shoot down a crow to fix its broken wing. To clear the fog or the blinders from the race horse, and settle down in the middle of the track and stare at the audience who scream is their dispare.

A poem is water. To extinguish the burning flame of fascism, revitalize the parched lips of an old mother wasting away in a hospital bed. A cool refreshing glass when one is hot under the cap. A place where animals of all sorts set their animal instincts aside bathe in the swimming whole. without it, to die of thirst and have intestons break like dust.

When drums were barrels, religion was bread, fishing was made by hand, and music was lightning, every woman was Cleopatra.

Poetry wasn't poetry.

Poetry is the dispair in our lives, the weight of lead pressed against the back of our necks. The feeling of thousands of papers on our chest and the relief when they are down to the last one. Poetry is our fathers, the Gunpowder Plot, and for those who are not, forgot, or even if they are, the everlasting lust of better. or for worse. But the striving to burden ourselves with others so that we may feel what other are feeling. have felt. Poetry stops the heart, and pumps the chest until blood flows like a small stream towards a river.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Tyranny of the Minority

            Looking to the sky, most of the skinless zombies waited for some sort of benevolent object to fall from the sky and aid them in their suffering. If they weren’t watching the planes they were either asking for names or lying motionless. The sky was still dark and the only real evidence of the planes was the low humming sound coming from over the horizon. The engine of the planes grew louder and louder and soon they were close enough that even those who were once asking for the whereabouts of their loved ones couldn’t help but give the planes the time of day. Now the only sound was the burning of timber, the occasional crumble of some fractured edifice, or the screams of the soon dead. Some of the fortunate families emerged from their shelters to see the rotting world around them, but for them, the planes gave the same hope as it did for the skinless zombie dragging his decomposed leg. Now nearly all of the survivors were looking through the settled dust and the red glow of the sky. Large objects begin to fall from the sky and most of us were so delirious we began to run toward them. I never saw a care package explode before.

            We scattered like children playing tag, trying to find some sort of safety. As I was running I saw Mr. Johnson staring at the horizon, watching the bombs explode destroying row after row of suburban homes. It was the greatest show on earth. I grabbed his shoulder’s and yelled, “Run, you god damn fool!” Déjà vu, all over again. He snapped from his trance and we began running down the main route away from the school and jumped through the yards of fire trying to get back to our shelters. Running through the yards I could feel the rubber on the soul of my shoe begin to melt from the intense heat. As we ran down the road we saw some other survivors funnel into a bomb shelter by the church. We looked at each other and without a word knew that was the only place that we could go. Personally, I’d rather die with many than live with nothing. We ran across the street from the yard we were standing in, and as the bombs became closer I thought that I wasn’t going to be able to make it. We started to slam on the rusted iron door of the bomb shelter screaming, “Let us in, let us in! Please for the love of God let us in!”. The door flung open and a figure from the darkness grabbed both of us with both of its hands and threw us to the cement ground. That was the first time I had been in a church in twenty years. The last time was when I married you.

            The ground shook violently and the sound was like a thousand freight trains going passed all at once. I covered my head and curled up into the fetal position. The violence of the quake was terrifying. But then as soon as it came, it stopped. I did not want to move, I was pretty sure then that I was dead. I wish I was dead. One can only go through so much petrifying experiences before he takes his own life. When I began to regain composure, the sounds of crying echoed off the cement walls, the smell of urine and feces from those who had soiled themselves mixed with the sounds of agony and burnt flesh. I can’t remember if I was crying or not, I wish I was, but at least I knew I had pissed myself, so I was still alive after all. But if I had known that I was going to spend the next 21 days there, I would have stopped by the house to get another pair of jeans.

            The Colonel had locked Marcus in the holding cell. The holding cell was a small room with no windows, not even a slit of light came through the crack between the door and the cement floor. Marcus sat up and rested his head against the wall, his wrists ached from the tension of the ropes. He rubbed his hands over his face and could tell that there was fresh blood pouring from his forehead. Someone must have hit him with the butt end of their gun because it was a precise gash. He ripped off a piece of cloth from around his waist and tied it around his forehead. He sat there, awaiting for his captors to bring him before the mercy of the King.

            Marcus was fearful of the King. He knew that this could most likely be the last days of his life. The king was notorious for executing many who had done far less than he had done. But on the other hand, no one in his village had even seen the king before. Although many of the villagers at Sashaport had drawn caricatures of the king, most of the time it was a fat, cross-eyed buffoon who had shot himself in the foot with his own gun. Marcus sat in his cell, thinking about what he would say to the king, or if he would be able to say anything at all.

            Soon the door flung open and a large guard’s silhouette engrossed the doorway, “Time to go”, he said in his baritone voice. Marcus got up and walked out of his cell. He was blinded by the light. But the noise, the sounds of cars, steal, and machinery were so loud he wondered how he could not have heard them from his cell. When he was younger, Marcus used to be able to hear their faint sounds, but he had no idea that they were this excruciatingly loud.

            Once Marcus was able to see, the guard marched him from his cell down to the ground floor of the prison. The guard was almost seven feet tall and muscular. His hair was short and well kempt. He wore a bullet proof vest and helmet, but the vest barely fit him. Marcus wondered if he had any kids. “

“A man that sized should never have sex unless the woman is just as masculine”, Marcus thought.

As he walked passed, he wondered how many people were in the prison, it could have been overcrowded or desolate.

“Prisoner number 0204022, ready for trial” said the guard through his radio. “Hey, how’s the forehead Marcus?” he mockingly asked Marcus. Marcus’ head whipped around in shock that he knew his name. The guard let out a booming laughter. Marcus turned around and walked through the iron gates towards the guards waiting for him outside the holding prison. The guards outside the prison were much smaller and feebler. They did not wear anything bullet proof but the helmets. The strapped iron shackles around his feet and wrists and walked him outside of the prison, his next stop was the Kingdom Court. They took Marcus and put him in a secured cell on the back of a SUV. Marcus had never seen an SUV before, had no idea what it was or how it worked. But it explained the noise. It was loud, and the gasoline filled his nostrils so that he couldn’t breathe. But he did have a window. The world he was looking at as the car was rattling across the broken pavement was like a world he had never seen before. The buildings near touched the sky, there were no trees, only plains of asphalt and cement, there was no rivers, streams, or ponds, no animals but only insects, many insects. As Marcus looked, gazing at the unfamiliar world, he saw some villagers below the overpass. They were cleaning up the filth of the kingdom. He did not know what village they were from, but they were wearing metal chainmail and steal armor. They couldn’t have been the king’s men because there was an overseer standing behind them with an ax.

“Who would have thought punishment was stricter inside the Kingdom Gates.” Marcus jokingly said, with a hint of sincerity.