a street sign that says, "YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE PENTAGON RESERVATION"

Buffalo Dance for the Dead

in my dreams, there is death,
often dismemberment, symbolic
in far too many ways,
a Houston, Texas, if you will.
I am often the Täter,
for some Good I rarely remember.
I had been hunting,
being hunted by,
a small child, not unlike myself
at that age - surely not
out of kindergarten -
but he was a gifted child,
well suited to the games
of death we played.
There were others,
for other reasons, I'm sure,
but it was like every other
dream.

Until, it was you,
standing over me
with your Kitchen knife...
The usual Righteous Indignation
was as gone as gone, survival
was trivial, unimportant in
so many fucking ways,
and I welcomed your knife,
poisoned with so much forgiveness,
right into my lungs!

You won't believe me
when I tell you -
I did not die.
Instead, daisies
and echinachea,
and Black Eyed Susans,
and Sunflowers,
and bonneted flowers of all sorts
in blues and reds
and yellows and pinks
and purple and orange
and so many more ...
they all sprung to life,
growing wildly
and singing some ethereal hymn
we could only hear from inside ourselves.
the petals vibrated irrationally,
falling into my gushing wound
that did not feel painful in the least -
rather an ecstasy, with violent convulsions
in time with the petals.
you were dressed
in an incredible
always changing dress -
a spiritual technology,
that was often
a short black wide pleated skirt
covering my nakedness below,
and a red satin ribbon strapped
dress filled with anger and regret,
those blue Bryant College shorts
of welcoming delights,
topless,
you stirred that knife around
my chest and guts and down
through my legs.
The petals followed your knife
until you were done, exhausted,
where you collapsed
into the petal filled hole
in my chest,
my guts,
my legs,
my feet ...
I did not die,
I transformed.
I was not asleep
long enough
to find out
what I might
have transformed
into.
Soapbox Artist: collecting art & literature of the worst kind