FAENA

like bird, the angel, mounted on the horse, blows horn--his be-bop, a bugle calls taps, the lights are goin' out, the nighthands release the constellation drop curtain, and the angels drops low notes, and they begin to fall. they fall like whores, like whores practicing swan dives into the shallow snow on the unshoveled sidewalk, trying like hell to make snow angels, but capitulating to the inevitable bloodied noses and crying, weeping, weeping, weeping willow, the whore's limbs, pendant branches, wet by snow and tear--eyelids, mascara soiled floodgates behind whom glaciers are melting down cheap, sludged, mudslide countenances, and their venerable, worn breasts hit the pavement keeping time...ba-bump...ba-bump...the lover grinds away, keeping time to the heartbeat, like sailors in a brothel pacing themselves to joplin, he breaks the hymen of unstretched canvas virgin sea; aquarius pours blood onto the trembling beaches. the sky, iceblink, a harsh neon glare. a strand of sparkling christmas lights stretches taut across a barely suburban skyline. i wish upon a star. it's only a christmas light. it blinks off, then on, then off again. it leaves me bitter. i pull the plug from its socket. all the lights of the big skygraph go dim. stars wispily dissipate, their disappearance quiet. the moonsatellite finds repose in the darkness, no longer blinded by the scathing star who rose at the edge of the pacific, lit japan, passed phineas, and quaked movie star mornings on the beaches of americanafest destiny, now dangling from the burned rod of light speed, quiet and dark, centerpiece universe, like a blue flicker, burned out bulb in the basement of the god's bungalow. during the blackout, something fell into my chimney. i turn, pull out a key, and unlock my door. it comes. nefarious, mammoth, bulging, swelling, surging, smoke, billowing smoke, my house a great furnace, caught inside--a pig on spit and fire--its flesh exuding the smoke from my broken home's stormdoor hinge. smoke that envelopes and soot that coats, the ghosts outside suck the smoke from my housebong while i stand pillowed clumst between the firm breasts of grey velvet puff caverns. my neck throbs under my jaw. strangled, drowning dry, slowly, as if legs be firmly harnessed over my shoulders--the calves drape my back--i scream into the groin of this tightening mass. my voice echoes in the deep halls of the abyss. the cicadas, resurrecting from their burrows on my front lawn, throng together--a parade of troops--to war with: venom venom sting--the sting--the tail of the scorpion is risen and arched over my head and its stinger brands the outstretched, unspoken arms of the hazed whore, now straddling my chest. we are abandon. and the cavalry begins to ride. the calvary begins to ride. and i challenge the annals of war to produce a more brilliant charge. legs spread scrawly merging at the crotch of the shatt al arab, the horsemen smoke and stride up and down the waters of babylon, flickin' cigarette ash to the sand. it mosaics, it disappears unnoticed like an accused drifter, it scatters and disappears like lost tribes. in a mirage there is a reflection. it is not a mirage. it is chebar, it mirrors the horsemen's saddled chimeras, breathing fire through lion's heads and whipping their cat-o'-nine tails against the grain. nihamti al afar va efer. long time stoners are smoking bowls of western future and plagues of apathy force quakes upon the earth. the cup spills over as the whores give history lessons--preaching, preaching, preaching, and ruling over kings. the whores are riding on top, the kings are letting the bottom slide, the riders are charging on loosened ground. the earth shakes. i watch a man struggling to stand. this is the last pass. he is cut down.

--R. Richard Wojewodzki