Gary Lemons

When the gods you don’t believe In drag you out of your comfortable Life and kick your ass long enough And hard enough to make you Question your serene acceptance Of emptiness as the obligatory tyrant Whose lack of moral concern is Responsible for your largess— It’s time to wake up—take off The bedroom slippers—put on the Mud boots and go clean the stall So the horses’ feet don’t rot— Ride away with a gentle agreement On your tongue that if loosed would Sound like an apology but stuck as it is Between molars is more like a curse Chomped by inaction into an antidote For clarity—the steam of a promise swabbed From the smithy of cold eyes. Be kind—love what you see—or go To sleep and stop dreaming you’re one of us.

I talk to the orchids on my kitchen Counter most days—ask forgiveness of them— Understand they are lost and far from home And alone in alien soil with smells Of meat in their stamens and dogs barking And timers going off—I do my best To make my world a jungle where they grow Their pale flowers and die warm in the steam Coming off kettles and dinner plates. I can’t look at anything anymore Without seeing the bones under the skin— The lips of the ventriloquist moving— The hunger in everything wants out— Held hostage to the coming bite— I place the fallen brown petals in the unmarked Grave of my poem where no one can disturb The mad flowers of the exiled king.

The veiled shape is a grandmother To the young boys working beside Her—packing stones from the field On the journey toward subsistence. Above them the Hindu Kush Disappears behind storm clouds the color of Milk in a metal pail. The grandfather is grinding Blades the way time sharpens Distrust—the stones fall From the mountains all winter— Almost always at night— The sound of them ganging up On starlight leaves a musical note Like jostled skewers. There’s nothing militant Here unless the noise of a shovel Is the voice of heresy— The missile enters the poem The way a horse defecates on an ant colony Simply because everything is Where it is when shit happens— If I were writing this poem I’d ignore the falcon hunting What small life escapes the heat signature Because it’s pushed by million-year- Old imperatives and unlike Us it has no off switch. This is where the poem Fails—where all literature fails— To thirst sufficiently to drink the last drip From the cold faucet attached To the executioner’s heart.