HOW TO OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY
(circa 1978)
1. Think of yourself a medical specialist,
puzzling how to diagnose a machine's stubborn silence.
2. Dip the doughnut of your torque
converter into a steaming cup of black oil. Stainless steel carbide bologna
sandwiches. Fan belt licorice.
3. A bowl of lug nuts bubble the red milk
of transmission fluid like tadpoles. Brackets and spark plugs breach the greasy
cookie jars on your automotive spice shelf.
4. Examine your patient through a
stethoscopic sheet of Marlboro smoke, an x-ray on a light-board. Translate the
fevered gibberish of an engine in idle.
5. Let the sun pause before your workshop
and hang stars above the door. Ignore the son and its failing starter. Consider
you might be a better god over a fickle society of steel. Know how to put them
in their place.
6. Give yourself a fuel treatment. Lunch
of bourbon on kerosene rocks. Brake Fluid ice cream. Backfire of kick-started
beer cans spewing.
7. Witchdoctor with a ratcheting wrench
through your nose – Your ignited blue hands assemble metallic dreams.
8. There is no better mattress than
cardboard on a sidewalk or
driveway Rorschach
patterned
in oil, a crunch of sand sprinkled as before a tap-dancer. Your wife and son know this, too… Stranded on
the porch,
watching
you,
ready
to run.
I WAS A HERO ONCE
A
dead satellite in a room
with
children bouncing like atoms
off
the walls. They are faceless,
sweaty
& every storm-based verb.
I
corral them before the television—
an
antique microwave cooking
colorless
cartoons. As the constellation
of
them settle, I move to the next room & see it.
The
ceramic planter which held
a
tittering ficus
had
been kicked into slices.
This
sight weakens me.
I
pull shards from the black
custard
soil as if harvesting tombstones.
I
caress the roots squiggling
in
my fingers, the hand of a dying grandparent—
my
heart cursing, pouring itself empty
thru
disbelieving eyes.
&
to think I was a hero once.
I
followed a pack of thieves
hiding
in a darkness unnamed by science,
yet
I could still see them—
&
felt sorry for them
as
I levitated above the yard.
The
stitching in my palms itched
emitting
ophidian beams of flame
igniting
every wet, incombustible
thing,
synthesizing everything else
to
greasy ash.
I could not be defeated.
I was so alone.
Look
at me now.
Stacking
broken pottery,
pawing
through soil as hissing
tears
drop like dead moths.
Only
a ______ can be bested
&
crushed within by indifferent
children.
A
TASTE OF AMNIOTIC FLUID
milky floral buds
snap open
traps broken
pistil pores pop
pushing
out
a porridge of sautéed cells,
melted
to malted—
globules of grease
molded
to the body
sends me further
down the street
than
I'd ever gone before
dizzy with
questions
unspeakable, unanswerable
my brains compass
a
helicopter
of
dandelion
petals / spinning
over estates of skin
boiling in upheaval
itch of cascading petals
primer of tongues’ tickling
touch
tearing like a lucid dream animal
through
the black chaparral
James Cagney is a poet from Oakland, Ca. He has appeared at venues in throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento, Vancouver, and Mumbai. He was profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle and on KALW.org. His first book, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory, is available now from NomadicPress.org. More of James' writing can be found at https://thedirtyrat.blog/
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