Poem the fourteenth: Written on April 13th, 8:15 PM -- Fighting Richthofen
Spoiler! :
We found him again in the summer, among honeysuckle,
filled-in wells, rusting cars, popped tires, and campfire ashes,
and his head was littered with cracks, a no man's land
of dried ground covered with cattle skulls, fractured further
by miniature earthquakes that had grown in intensity
thanks to the water that dripped through him in monsoon nights
beneath a rainforest only capable of satiating one feral child,
and all he could shout out at us were that the yellow bombers
were coming again, that they were strafing his B-47,
and their mistake of taking prisoners the last few times
would be rectified.
Maybe they have him in a straitjacket now, wheeling him
through hallways lined with scrawled graffiti
of crude anatomical drawings, poorly-worded swears,
and whispers of wet brown leaves falling from trees in the autumn;
he might still be ranting onward about how he is Trotsky,
that it is his destiny to be struck in the head with an icepick
while his conspirator prunes the garden one last time
and takes a leftover rose to deliver to his wife in Fiji,
where they will sit upon beach sands with pina coladas
as he stands, shouts his last few words of warning
against the angels circling to capture his spirit,
and collapses onto the desk with the sound of a bell.
Like he had told me, that final day of his independence
in the realm of man, as the ambulance pulled up on our driveway
and narrowly avoided mailbox, dog, and stupid uncle alike -
I was his favorite brother, and so I could best keep a secret,
one in which he wanted the pain to stop, wanted these fights
among a thousand temptresses in his mind to end, let him sleep
on downy pillows as his emotions gasp their last
and be pulled into the bowls of the Ninth Circle,
where they might be frozen up to their own fragile, oblong heads
and suffer eternally before the chewing, weeping, dumb body of Satan
for their betrayal of his once spotless mind, having stabbed it
with the fervor of Cassius plus a man scorned by his fall from grace,
leaving it black and wormy with rot;
"I wish I never had to let myself be consumed by every moment
so I am forced to wail for my endless last years."
filled-in wells, rusting cars, popped tires, and campfire ashes,
and his head was littered with cracks, a no man's land
of dried ground covered with cattle skulls, fractured further
by miniature earthquakes that had grown in intensity
thanks to the water that dripped through him in monsoon nights
beneath a rainforest only capable of satiating one feral child,
and all he could shout out at us were that the yellow bombers
were coming again, that they were strafing his B-47,
and their mistake of taking prisoners the last few times
would be rectified.
Maybe they have him in a straitjacket now, wheeling him
through hallways lined with scrawled graffiti
of crude anatomical drawings, poorly-worded swears,
and whispers of wet brown leaves falling from trees in the autumn;
he might still be ranting onward about how he is Trotsky,
that it is his destiny to be struck in the head with an icepick
while his conspirator prunes the garden one last time
and takes a leftover rose to deliver to his wife in Fiji,
where they will sit upon beach sands with pina coladas
as he stands, shouts his last few words of warning
against the angels circling to capture his spirit,
and collapses onto the desk with the sound of a bell.
Like he had told me, that final day of his independence
in the realm of man, as the ambulance pulled up on our driveway
and narrowly avoided mailbox, dog, and stupid uncle alike -
I was his favorite brother, and so I could best keep a secret,
one in which he wanted the pain to stop, wanted these fights
among a thousand temptresses in his mind to end, let him sleep
on downy pillows as his emotions gasp their last
and be pulled into the bowls of the Ninth Circle,
where they might be frozen up to their own fragile, oblong heads
and suffer eternally before the chewing, weeping, dumb body of Satan
for their betrayal of his once spotless mind, having stabbed it
with the fervor of Cassius plus a man scorned by his fall from grace,
leaving it black and wormy with rot;
"I wish I never had to let myself be consumed by every moment
so I am forced to wail for my endless last years."
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