Yr Name A Curse To Burn My Lips

Suddenly staring at a field of rock and rubble,
A cry for help balanced
Trembling on my tongue,
Turned on to the smell of burning bridges
And open wounds,
I recognized you and we laughed,
Laughed like the killers we were -
The war was over,
We were never going back.

As fire rained and angels raged,
I carved out a place for you among the stones
And laid you down -
(The feel of yr ruined flesh
Beneath my fingers
The dust settling in yr unblinking eyes) -
I buried you with yr boots on,
Yr weapon locked and loaded -
You were definitely going outside the wire.

When I’d finished,
I looked at what had become of you
And felt moved to speak,
To say something profane and blasphemous,
Something to open the gates of Hell,
Something I knew you’d dig –
But shrapnel had stolen my words
And all I could do
Was bleed on yr grave.

Later, when I awoke
On clean white sheets,
The nurses’ starched cammies
Whispering along the corridors,
I reached out for you.
Finding only my knife, I smiled,
Happier than I have ever been.

Knowing what we hath wrought,
What manner of fury and firepower
We had brought to bear on this
The cradle of civilization,
Knowing that you would be forgotten
And justice,
Finally,
Would be served.

She Was Tall, 5-11 With Her Boots On

Torn like taffy at the county fair,
She was busy throwing my shit off the balcony,
Mixing her tears with my dirty laundry
And pillows stained with someone else’s makeup.

Anchorwoman, what have you done?
My cries fell on deaf and battered ears,
Small canals filled to overflowing
With broken promises
Tossed like garbage from my drunken mouth.
She couldn’t believe a word I said
Until she knew I was telling her the truth.

I didn’t make a scene,
Just stood and cooed
Like some maligned pigeon.
More empties to add to the collection
Of broken things
Lying on the sidewalk
Underneath my balcony.

When she was done, crumpled and defeated,
Exhausted, spent, and utterly alone,
I reached out for her.
She recoiled in horror,
Straightened and stood,
Proud of herself for fighting back.
Some small battle had been won
Some piece of ground
Had been definitively taken.

She walked out with her head held high,
Pausing only once to kick my dirty laundry.

I saw her later that night on TV,
Calm and collected as she
Recounted the latest breaking stories.
You’d never guess where she'd been.

Search & Destroy

I told you we’d be there soon,
Watched from the corner of my eye
As the life ran out of you
Making puddles of black
On the floormat
And vinyl seat covers,
Iggy & The Stooges too loud
On the stereo
A cigaret burning my fingers.

I turned left off the highway
Gunned it onto the caliche
The Mustang’s tail sliding
Sideways only to right itself
At the last second.
You didn’t look good at all
Slumped against the door
Holding your guts in with both hands.
I could smell your insides
And the stink of gunpowder
See the tiny pellets as they worked
Their way out of you
To mix with the blood and bile.

“Shit,”
You said
And you were right.

I offered you whiskey
Which you took
If only to have something to hold onto.
I thought about crying
(But only for a second)
Then changed the music
Tapping the steering wheel in time
As I pushed the needle
Into the red.

Later when I rolled you out of the car
And onto the grass,
You looked so peaceful lying there
I almost rolled out myself
To join you
To sleep the sleep of sleeps
And dream of water
While the prairie burned around us.

Drunk on the blood

Of six generations of Texans
My lips are stained with Mad Dog
My teeth chatter
My skin crawls around me

High on southern hospitality
Comfort seeps from poverty's pores
And I don't pretend to understand
Anything as complex as dirt

Even though I know
This flavor, this grit
Of seedwheat in a summer Coke
Lightbroken air breathed
Through harvest filters --
I have been there

Scratched it onto tabletops
Puked it onto carpets
Tried to wash it off
Until I was pink and raw
As a barbed-wire newborn

Drunk on the sap
Of a family tree
I draw the poison out
Eversoslowly
Through the hollow end
Of a wheatstalk spike

Iktomi and The Food Stamp Incident

This is from the Big Indian, Luke Warm Water. Enjoy.

They laughed when you told them yr name

They screamed and cried
Did their damndest
To make you come apart
You walked the edge
Of a chainlink fence
With yr hands on fire
A smile painted on yr face
Yr guts in a brown paper bag

They broke yr favorite thing
Took from you yr hardest-won toys
Those pretty pretty boys
No kiss lasts, you said
No tide relieves me
Something as simple as flames
You broke it down
Took them to places
They never wanted to go

I see you now
On the edge of some
Inconquerable cliff
Pointing to the foam
With broken fingers
Mouthing truth
Faking it among whitecaps
Made to madden and reinvent you

Waves break because everything does
And there is no more time
In the revolver's chambers

Yr skin is someone else's leather
Stretched too tight to fit
Over hollows where bones
Don't know their place
Locked in the execution
Of half-assed pirouettes
Spun in the periphery

Ray LaMontagne