A Man, Only More So

You hate to admit nothing cosmic has happened today.
No alien race of Amazon women crash-landed
in your backyard like in your 13-year-old dream.
Your thirteen year dream. Because you are a man

just like every other man, only more so.

Your hands scrounge around from lack

of something metallic to swing. Your salivating mind

craves animal flesh between your teeth.

Gristle bits and grease flecked in your beard.

You wear soapbox running shoes. Have a John Wayne

badge beneath your car seat. Preside in public

like the crown prince of seduction. Sometimes wonder,

why should I be good? Your Caligular smile undergoes

costume changes like a moonlit riverbank.

It flops more sweat than an actor. Everywhere you see

permits for your free passage. Everything approaches

like a language that will translate itself.

You are bald, white-bellied, puffy-cheeked,

middle-aged, libidinous and unhappy.

Just like everyone else a man, only more so.

One falling shadow in the cloud of society’s thunderstorm.

The mulch and soft-wood bounds of a wild garden.

Sleeping watchman of the sacred cattle.

Mender of the patchwork cloth of dreams.

Operator of the roving eyes. And fiercest of all,

your wagon bones carry the entire burden

of love’s expedition on your flat head.

Your heart is a camel caravan. Your heart spits

at anyone that comes too close. Smelly, weary,

delirious mouth of yours botches anything worth saying.

If we were made in the image of heaven, then

there is only ever the god of mistaken identity.

Eve, I am going to disappoint you, here,

but your great-great-septillionth grandson is still

no more than any common man, maybe more so.

As the boardwalk music fades, as the Californias

get slapped by cold watery hands, as the party

outlasts any last wrenched attempts at humor,

a man calmly steps onto the rake of some ogre-thought.

Don't let me pretend this moment isn't too tiring.

My hands are inverted parachutes. They whistle past

the burning engines of our wartime bodies.

If only we had never hidden our tongues

as concealed weapons and mounted them into calibers.

Inside my ears reside a village of women

plying the stream with laundry and carrying babies

swaddled on their backs. Here, all the men went hunting

and were swallowed by wolves. I don’t know where I was.

The real efforts of men overcome me. Take precaution

with my surrendering, there are caveats worth discussing.

Reviews

[Donald Meikle]

Great write. Don't mess with me either.

[W.k.kortas]

Hmm...we are not men, we are Devo? Plays wonderfully between past and present, between man in so many stages, evolutionary and otherwise. Fine, fine piece of work.