FIRECRACKERS AT NIGHT

Tiny chains lead back from my ankles

to dark rooms where my beasts

live in short films.They flicker on damp walls,

and disembodied voices echo

like Satchmo playing in the background.

Behind the door to the right is not so bad,

there I am on the fourth of July:

I insert a Black Cat into the green ooze

of a fresh cow pie, bent over to light the fuse.

It ends full frame on my ecstatic face,

then cuts to the perfect crater I have made…

Interrupted by Mama next door bringing Bessie

to the barn where she would make

that stainless bucket sing

with streams of hot milk.

Down the hall, a golden morning sees me

cut a vine to swing out from the cliff over

the poplars where Sandy Creek

cut the pasture from the woods.

And even further, I make love for the first time

on the red leather back seat of my father's

Oldsmobile, where we squealed to snippets

of rock and roll, my ticket to ride this road.

.

But all of that is just bait I sometimes

fall for, and wander deeper

to a lake so cold, even the memory

turns me blue, skinny dipping at night,

laughing like neon in the dark.

In the tenebrous distance,

her bony fingers cradle my brilliant son,

she mumbles my name, asks questions

I do not know how to answer.

In this film noir, I am brusque, and she,

a damaged beauty I did not know how to

love, lies at the bottom of a perfect crater

I have made.