Gasoline

I like the smell of gasoline,
just a whiff, enough to make
you think about the thin elixir
running through the shining pipes
with the gray resin of earth
and fumes on the outside.

But someone parked a car
with a leaky tank nearby
and I can feel my memories
smelting out of my brain
and burning like a new fuel
for America’s engines.

If you’re a traveler, America
is a whirling dervish vision
rising out of the blur of all
the grassy roadsides going by.
The smell makes the past combust
and you live in the present, burning it up.

Fantasy

If the lightning punches a surge
into the frail capillaries of my computer,
I could lose all of my poems, stories,
and half-built plans for a better life.

I’d stand in the middle of the room,
and, with curses drying up on the floor
and the sweat of helpless rage in my clothes,
I’d put a chair out on the lawn and sit.

I’d look away from the house and try
to forget it exists. The grass would be
a little wet, and I’d let the bugs crawl
up to my knee before slapping them flat.

I’d let the sun set and feel every last
thread of the illusion that my life
just started over, and that it only began
when I fell asleep that night.

Combat

I’m struck by the clever method of the trap,
the poison a favorite food taken to the queen
who must delight in the first ant to bring
the rare, aromatic gel. The queen, glutted
with eggs, touches the favored ant’s head
with a feeler and sends her back up the tunnel.
The little ant droops to the floor and,
when the ants behind start dragging her body
out of the way, believes it’s the queen herself
inviting her back to the chamber to share
a bit of the golden ambrosia in her jaws.

I feel a tiny red insect of guilt moving.
I’m glad for it. My queen is not dead.
My guilt is wingless and sterile. I set
the traps in the best places for a quick kill.

While the ants find the traps, my queen
asks me about metaphors. Have I
poisoned sweet food for the queens
in the chambers of another’s heart?
Am I the bait, the worker, or the poison?
I tell her the truth, and she takes my food
for the firey red larva moving in my chambers.

Stone Heart

It is said that if you don’t
worship God, the very
stones will cry out.

I keep my peace
among the stones.
My heart holds my mouth closed.

If the stones cry out
I’ll let their songs
loosen my throat again.

Power

Back in grade school, I once heard
one boy tell another about the time
he killed a man. He’d been hunting
ducks from a bridge when one shot
missed and hit a man fishing
from his boat on the river.
We learn to tell lies long before
we learn to hear them.

I could feel the warm halo
of death on that boy from my chair.
He had stolen power from the locked
toolshed of adulthood and found
that his hands fit the grips.
When he saw his shot, he must
have raised the sights, just so.
I could not have; I wrung my useless hands.