More blood
And more pus
And goo
Red streaks leading to
Bottomless pits
Gushing and pooling
Sickly red in afternoon glare
Garish garish
And the chisel slips
And the hammer
Smashes your thumb
Again
Only this time you don’t scream
You take another blow
The pain, yeah it’s there
But you bear it
The path needs building
And you’re the builder
The bricks need a saving
And your the savior
Finger tips worn smooth
Split and crack and ooze
Hamstrings strained and popping
Arms and knuckles and muscles and joints and skin
Pounded into submission helplessness
It’s all rough and hard and blunt
Sharp and gritty and dusty and muddy
Mosquito clouds your vision
A scorpion numbs your thumb and you carry on
Covered head to toe in poison ivy
Defiant as love
You pound and lift and hack
And strain and twist and pull
Nothing else to do
Path need be built

I quiver blind and deaf
Wind and gravity and light
Define a tumbling body
Blurred rough black against black
A shadow floating over a void
And skeleton bikers crash
Through rifts on flaming hogs,
Spewing flaming daisies
From their tailpipes.
Laughing skeletons riding bitch
Seed fresh ruin with dead
Rabbits drawn from top hats.
A poet tumbles through
A membrane. A puff of smoke
Materializes and dissipates
On a forming horizon
Faintly glowing red
From fires of creation.
No one notices.
The skeleton bikers,
And their bitches miss it.
Surly the rabbits miss it,
And if the daisies noticed,
They kept it to themselves—
Perhaps out of hope
The poet would save them.
But poet gone.
Poet not coming back.
You’re only hope, dear daisies,
Is that you painted a scene
Captivating enough to
Hold a poet.
Make it rubbery elastic,
Gooey and sticky.
Make it flypaper and
Catch a poet.
Make it sharp and deep,
So when I come crashing through,
I capture at least your essence,
A poem for the poet.