The art of violence

For Wordsmith Wednesday:

The Art of Violence

-- written for my cousin Aaron
after watching the Hong Kong
movie "Full Time Killer"


1.

 

How far will the young man's obsession go

 

with trapeze artistry, the dangling 

 

on the edge of a roof,

 

that slow movement

 

imperceptibly toward

 

a false Eden with the balletic balladic-

 

like moves scissoring through the air,

 

zipping doo dah cool 

 

through water turning into blood

 

via wine. No, wait, wineglass atop a table-

 

top stops in mid-motion as it drops

 

to the floor, the moment before breaking

 

into a myriad of shards 

 

through which a myriad of lives can be seen:

 

first, this one where no wineglass sits

 

atop a tabletop ready to 

 

fall, only caught in mid-motion.

 

It's all an illusion, look behind

 

the shell, through the skeletal structure,

 

into the blood corpuscles, what is 

 

there? The next life is your own until it is

 

hurled off top of parking garage

 

or through a plate glass window.

 

You are the child you didn't recognize

 

behind the glazed expression, the thrill of 

 

the kill, splintering bone-

 

chips caught in teeth of a buzzsaw blade.

 

No matter how fine sifted to dust,

 

dust is still dust, you can't erase the man, 

 

bring him back from the dead, another

 

replay, recharge your weapon and play on,

 

can you?

 

 

 

2.

 

Each day in the desert a pack of mules 

 

hides its true intent from you.

 

It spins out of control until

 

the rivulet of blood riveted to the side

 

of his face moves one side to the other

 

like a mole on a supermodel.

 

It's all makeup, trickery

 

conjured out of splitting atoms, 

 

rippling schizophrenia from 

 

beneath the edge of a man's epidermal crust. 

 

The drill bit becomes stuck 

 

in this groove, his/her 

 

mellifluous voice: 

 

inchoate, salubrious.

 

3.

 

It is dizzying, like emptying

 

shell after shell 

 

after shell after

 

shell of the meat

 

stuffed inside, entrails

 

where the cancer

 

metastasizes 

 

into a metonymy,

 

comes out

 

from the metacurpus

 

into the tunnel:

 

 ordnance, 


 ordo, onco-

 

 genesis.

 

4.

 

Montage:

 

the metagalaxy,

 

the meritocracy of 

 

the arcade

 

gunners,


from the intraocular 

 

center,

 

he invokes the name of 

 

a long-deceased god

 

from the involution of time, 

 

space, eternity

 

comes heartache, gruel

 

the flecks of

 

newscasts, forecasts of

 

snow, sleet, freezing rain,

 

the ovenbird trampled 

 

on the promontory. 

 

I am retrograding into the grotto,

 

emaciated.

 

5.

 

The dictums of the left hand

 

versus the dictums of the right hand.

 

There is no right, no wrong.
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