One Superb Poem by Richard Wayne Horton

 

                     T.B.O.D.

Two create both. 

And yes, it’s terrible

 

Inside, outside, where is the outside? 

There is no outside.

 

What I see and where I live

is as much me as my bones.

 

I go out to look at the empty skies

but discover they’re an invasion route. 

 

What have I called?

 

A 7 mile high flash silver cumulus

comes walking on threads of rain.

 

The pointing finger of a church spire

says, go where I’m pointing.

 

Disobedient, I enter the underworld. 

 

It’s older here.

 

Drainage tunnels beneath the concrete utopia

are a whisper that seems to go on forever.

 

THE     BONES     OF     DALLAS

 

I am become limestone.

I am become geology.

 

Stepping out into the suburban whiteness

I hold in my hands

 

these continually passing cars,

these lawn sprinklers,

these flower beds,

these bags of fertilizer,

these flushing toilets,

these lawn mowers.

 

Down in the creek

fossils have washed loose

and assembled themselves

to climb out and roam the sidewalks

disguised as insurance salesmen

 

Madam may I speak to the breadwinner?

 

…madam?

 

Have you ever thought what might happen

if you were to push your hand

into the dirt of your back yard

and  touch the coolness of legacy?

 

If you were to feel it?

 

You’ve known that dirt

when you were digging to plant flowers.

You knew it

 

but you didn’t fully know it.

 

Here’s something that could surprise you.

The leviathan of the land lies below.

He is rock.  He cannot be understood.

His cold sub-eternal shadow

steadies the assassin’s sighted gun barrel,

so curious to know its prey.

 

Madam…

 

Have you ever walked

through submerged cities when you slept,

and heard above you

a pounding on the door?

 

There are dinosaurs under this town.

 

Down in the creek

children put their feet

into dinosaur footprints

and pick up pieces of fossilized bone,

to duel like crazed reptiles.

 

The cut away shelf of black clay

is a history of Texas murder. 

Long winds thunder in their ears.

The empty Dallas God

speaks without ceasing.

 

Here               we               grow,

 

as the suburbs kill us with mildness

 

Turn homeward to the canned corn cackle

of TV laughter. TV go spawk spawk spawkie…

(Blam!)…

cartoon head gets blown off. 

“Ya durned varmint!” 

The head pops back up

and chitters at the fat little hunter,

but he’s done.

He throws his gun on the ground

and joins a pacifist cell.

 

Later  in a comic strip,

a Communist rabbit is discovered and turned in. 

Comic.  Kazi. 

Commie-crazy.

 

Saturday I’m laying on the bed

looking up at a plastic jet fighter

that hangs on a string. 

The pilot, a spider, bails. 

I wave a comic book, killing it with humour,

then  jump up and hit the road. 

 

A motorist stops and asks

if I need to be turned in at a crazy house. 

“Uhhhhh, well maybe.”  

The motorist speeds off, woo!  Lucky escape!  

 

After a while I stagger along

toward a mirror-topped lake

that keeps jumping ahead

like propaganda promises.

 

A pickup pulls over.  I get in,

and the white haired minister

pushes that bible right on over:

big old grin:  “That’s the answer, son!” 

 

Ballpoint thoughts I’ll draw you:

 

suburbs at noon. Dogs gargle

near piercing green mimosas.

Lawn sprinklers hiss in the womb of whiteness.

 

Kids with sun-bleached hair and brown faces

watch from inside a refrigerator box,

little blond-haired bugs in the shadows,

playing house,

 

holding shadowy teacups.

 

A newspaper rolls limply across the sidewalk. 

It has a picture of Jack Ruby.

 

Downtown at the jailhouse they’re bringing Oswald out.

The detectives wear light coloured suits. 

A pointing finger, the back of a head wearing a Stetson. 

A fierce frown: “Who shot that gun off?”

 

If you’re not careful

you could blow the top off a big secret!

 

In the deep afternoon I find myself

in back of a suburban Catholic church,

where yellow grass sews across cracks in the black clay. 

Nearby there’s a corrugated iron fence.

I can smell the dirt.

A face is brown in front of the rusted metal.

 

The trusted metal

 

(I find myself) (strangely) (at rest)

 

In the parking lot an updraft

sends tatters of birds high into the air.

Tender sprouts have been deformed

beneath the constantly planted feet

of a well meaning old man

 

CRASH!.........                       CRASH!..........

 

Colossal           feet           smash          into            the            land

 

getting closer,

bigger than anyone could have thought

sooner than anyone could have expected

 

It’s here! 

He’s here! 

I’m here!

 

There is no past!

 

I am the past!

Richard Wayne Horton writes short prose, hybrid forms and poetry in WMASS, sometimes with a hyperrealist, surrealist or gothic feeling. He has 2 Pushcart nominations and is the 2019-21 MA Beat Poet Laureate. He has published 3 collections: Sticks & Bones (2017, Meat For Tea Press), Artists In The Underworld (2019, Human Error Publishing) and Ballet For Murderers (2021, Human Error Publishing). His flash, short stories, and poetry have appeared in Southern Pacific Review, The Dead Mule, Meat For Tea, Bull & Cross, Danse Macabre du Jour and others.

“T.B.O.D.” - A previous version of this poem under a different title appeared in the anthology Honouring Nature published by Human Error Publishing, but Paul Richmond, the editor, has given me permission to send this new version out with the new title.