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
