GIANT KILLERS

 

A falling oak cracks the afternoon quiet.

Chainsaws follow behind like acolytes of

that first loud unexpected sound.

 

From my bedroom, I can hear the massacre of a

tree trunk in the valley below, feel each log hacked away

from the whole, small enough now for children to bear in

their arms and haul up to the house.

 

I can be on this bed and have a boyhood dream

of giants cut down by my dead-eye slingshot

reenacted with a piercing buzz and the churn

of resistance falling away in a scream of wood-chips.

 

I can imagine these small men and even smaller

boys, each with a jagged slice of limb or skull

or torso stumbling up the hill, not caring that

their shoulders sag and their muscles ache,

for they have slain the unslayable.

 

Then I remember how miserable it feels when things

that brush against the sky no longer do, '

when the huge and inconceivable

are cut down to human size.

 

I have put down my slingshot, saved my giant's

life many times since I was young. And now here

are others, strangers, destroying him within earshot.

 

They'll take him away in pieces...his heart,

his nerve, his brain.

He'll be part of a large, crackling,

flame-throwing hearth fire.

That'll warm some people.

JOE DREAMED OF JEANNIE

Vacationing at Cocoa Beach,

by day, his horned owl eyes pierced

the canopy of sun-tanned blondes

for the one who twitched miracles,

whose navel was a sparkling jewel.

At night, he'd stare at the shadow bones

of his empty motel bed,

imagine them made flesh,

a harem of one.

He finally did meet someone arid marry,

two years of half way decent sex,

and then ten to twenty of she

chained to the kitchen,

he sprawled in the parlor watching reruns

of "I Dream Of Jeannie."

From time to time,

he'd rub an empty beer bottle,

and his wife would drag herself into the room

with a tray of chips and dip,

though she never once called him "Master."

RAT-HOLE

For every child in this tenement building,

there's at least a dozen rats.

Not that anyone ever begs for their share.

The rodents gnaw through walls.

They feast in cupboards.

Traffic noise is not just

honking horns and screamed obscenities.

It's also scrambling feet across a high beam.

Some people sleep with baseballs bats.

It gives great pleasure

to contemplate crushing a toothy skull.

A baby was bitten just last month.

The clinic gave her shots.

The reluctant landlord

called in the exterminators.

Rats moved next door until they were done.

One tenant says that even fancy homes

have rats.

But no one's ever been in such a place

to verify.

Such talk is part of acceptance.

Rats go with the leaky taps

and inefficient radiators.

It's as if these creatures

are the architects, the builders,

of these places.

No one can move in

until rattus norvegicus

gives the thumbs up.

Somehow people manage to live here.

love; care and cherish

like the best families.

Of course, no one bothers to frighten their kids

with tales of the boogie man.

In this rat-hole,

he'd be an improvement.

John Grey