bashert
for shannon harney
1.when i hold you
terror bleats,
fear stalks the mind
&
the caged heart screams.
2.
thinking back
on my passion,
i was like one blind,
unafraid of the dark.
3.
human hearts
like deep, dark water,
the perfect hiding place.
4.
to love another person,
to literally
become one with them,
is to kill them,
eat them
& inhale their
ashes.
5.
fallen in love, i
fall/fall/fall,
an anchor,
in concrete shoes.
6.
love’s weight
suffocates.
blanket-stash
red, white & blues
. . . the errand
boy sent by grocery clerks
to collect the
bill.
flies
amassed
about
the enemy’s spilled guts
come
& see, the pale green horse
rocket
apogee of death
&
the high angle of hell
hath
followed with him
who
once believed Amerikkka
was
God & country
worth
dying for, but
from
where he now
panhandles
it
stinks of expendable &
mechanical
police-goon threats
parroting
“quality of life” commands:
don’t be here
when we come back!
escaped
unscathed
from
the rabid mouth of madness
defined:
complicit in
pre-emptive
war &
come
home to
demon
winter frost
grips
the homeless vet by the throat
after
two tours fighting terrorism &
taught
to believe
what
he was ordered to believe
fighting
for “freedom & democracy”
returned
the traumatized hero
defined: not economically viable
sing-song
mumbled
the
homeless vet
a
cardboard sign in hand: will kill
for
loose change
for
work, a roof overhead
a
malt liquor “forty” to forget—
a
cigarette
his
once patriotic dogma
enacting
massacres in our name
a
warrior mind animated
by
exploding ghosts
of
the foreign horde:
men,
women &
the
children—their faces
shredded
to collateral damage
the
innocent
always
the least able
to
dive for cover
when
drones co-sign propaganda
as
national security &
his
remorse in denial
like
once welcoming doors slamming
&
his heart-stutter PTSD
as
all of a sudden as vipers
war-makers
& profiteers
like
instinctive murder
that
has a voice
a
blood-stained, metallic-copper
guilt
after
promises
that
have not been kept
after
honor bought &
paid
for
with
Amerikkkan tax dollars
one
ragtag nation under God
now
turned to slow suicide &
we
bury the dead alive
in
Salvation Army soup lines &
rain-soaked
cardboard boxes
hannibal lecter
convinces her
to swallow her
tongue to death
Nevada
County Sheriff’s Office—08.20.14
10:17pm—A
caller from the 12000 block of Old
Wood
Road reported a woman screaming for
10
minutes.
not
the flower but the thorn
puncturing holes in her radiance
the
nonexistent
voices
of manipulation & coercion
perceived
as solid matter
but
only empty space
articulating
the
menace of thunder
that ricochets across
a mottled sterling-gray cellulite sky
the invisible telepathic rabbit
inside a glossy white paper frame around her
like a Polaroid
disconnecting
her from the world
as
if by disfigurement
she
could not circumnavigate
she
only stopped screaming
when
she used the butcher knife
to
cut the screaming rabbit’s throat
henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words in fire to
wake the world ablaze: free verse illuminated by courage that empathizes with
all the awful moments, launching a freight train warning that blazes from the heart, like a chambered bullet exploding
inadvertently. His poetry collection, freedomland
blues (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014), was released in September of 2014.
He also has an upcoming e-chapbook, entitled physiography of the fittest
(Kind of a Hurricane Press), to be released in 2014. now,
runantellyomamaboutdat!!
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