Thom Williams
Blaster reads the traffic
with some of everything for sale.
He likes the looks of limos
chrome shoulder to lacquered haunch
until twenty thousand gridlocked roofs
make an avenue mosaic,
speckled with sisters
their feathers and fans.
Blaster saw the abandoned taxi,
engine running in the rain,
heard the Salsa pumping.
He saw the chicken cooking
and two cops among a thousand brothers
one world up from Nigeria or Senegal,
ticking out the splattered English
of a carwash Lagado.
In the Acid Text it reads
that right below the fire was a new Earth.
The fire is so far away.
Then locusts descended in a vague year.
Later, Hell was harrowed
with a bad attitude.
Pages subdivided--
chapter and worse on columns of fire,
and like conjurations,
were desert visions.
A blinding virgin in the sun
was the displeasure of lightning.
Chemicals barberpole the air.
They have settled in as the wind fell.
This is the colorful refinery menu,
and things green
are in a most forbearing hesitation.
The north wind has failed me--
where you can lie
and grow truthful.
The sulfur content hits the panic level
and the Moon is flying;
the Moon is hiding;
the Moon has already died.
I am not used to nothing,
yet.
With crow's arms
I am returning,
pounding the air so fast
that the streets turn to ruin,
so fast that time peels like paint.
I am coming in low
with a sleek, black shape
and a pointed attitude.
You came dragging in your trail of sorrow,
each face with a name.
With a crow's shame
I am stealing in this moment,
released at last from love
onto a wide plain
with the look of a world
that forgives.
You came carrying wreckage--
a temple constructed of bones.
In a crow moment
I raked my claws
through the tender carrion,
then rode the aggregate breezes.
Infrequently, the call
from my black voice-box
was a laugh.