The ordinary person's guide to understanding the world around us,

brought to you by one who sees clearly.

When two runs to five
And five walks to ten
And blood still flies
From his ears and his eyes;

Still flows down his chest
And covers his groin, 
Races over his toes and onto the
Roof of the shrine
	(curiously wrought in 
	Sodomite salt)
Where it pools like a fat red coin—

When rents in his flesh
Fresh as day one
Bend you over to retch 
On the floor, graceless you Rise
And sprint for the door.  Outside
In the sun, you kneel and you pray

Like rabbits in bewildered surprise
Understanding at last your tenuous
Hope is dead as a November fly;

Because ten limps to twenty,
Twenty crawls to the end.  
And absolution is the province
Of gods not crucified men.

3/1/2008
J. Piquette Jr.

_________________________________________

"Just leave me alone, asshole," he seemed to say as I snapped his picture while lying flat on the floor. He was an awfully big bastard of a spider, and I found myself remembering my cousin Tom, who hated spiders, was deathly afraid of them, and how he always seemed to produce a can of raid whenever he crossed trails with one.  Tom was killed on his bicycle in 1987 while riding home from campus in Ft. Collins. Some numb nuts college kid zipping too fucking fast into a left turn ended Tom's life before it even really got into high gear.  It's one of those things, everyone said.  Just one of those things.  

Tom had this grip strengthening thing he used to squeeze all the time.  Like a spring with handles, and he'd walk around the house we shared messing with it all the time.  I have it, now, have kept it to this day.  I put it aside after Tom died,  and I'd look at it and wonder how it could be that he was simply gone.  Just like that.  After everything was over, and we all had trundled back to our various lives, I put it with my belongings and have kept it with me over the years, twenty-one of them now.  And every so often I will take it out of the place where I keep it and I will give it a squeeze, remembering.

I imagine Tom would have wanted me to kill that huge wolf spider before he leaped onto my nose and repaid me for interrupting his day with a vicious bite.  But I didn't, and the spider didn't.  After I picked myself up off the floor, he sped away down the hall and under a door.  Gone.  

I hope he had a good life.  

 pervasiveness of the evil in

 humanity which drives

 people away from religion.

 An interesting irony."     

*     *     *

__________________________

Savior


If you listen to them
Bleakly crow in their dark
Little robes, in dark little rows
On fat bruised knees in misery
Or woe,
Dark little faces
Painted with hope or a fake grin—

Well, The Coil devolves before it spins.

The penitents nod
And the penitents know
Their dark little poems
And their dark little codes.

The sidewise eight
The bloodied man
The snake
The tree
And the Unhomed clan.

In dark little rooms
Behind dark shuttered blinds
Their Litanies ferry each dark little fool
To a dark little pool,
Where some thing swims in and quiets the din.

Something washes the blood away
Something makes the ripper obey
Something soothes tears
From all their red eyes
And the clamor in their heads subsides.

Some thing extends forgiveness of all their sins
Reminds them that god is alive
And always has been.
_______________

John Piquette Jr.
Revised 6/9/08

______________________________________________________________________________________

Inseparable


One would think his mangled arm
crushed smashed turning black
bones far beyond merely broken,
splintered might be more apt
as if popped out and split 
by some insane woodsman's dullish axe--

rather than wrapped in bloody terry cloth
and occasionally slapped 
once-in-a-while twisted
often prodded poked pierced
by his own ungentle hand wielding
a shiny shard of mirrored glass--

(some voice tells him he likes that)

rather than hacked at, pulled on, ripped
torn, dunked in bleach or scat
hammered 
burned 
peeled
scraped
gnawed or cracked

rather than all of that 
one might fucking think
the tormented useless limb
might be better served 
through sanitary amputation
a nice clean break 
with medical sedation

and watch his eyes grow huge 
and make you tie him down 
hear him scream not in pain
but for fear of the separation.

in the end the voices win
the corrupted terry cloth and his arm
remains
insidious poison creeping 
toward his heart and brain

later he smashes the mirror 
in his hospital room
and later still as his sight begins to dim
tortured eyes through a silver
razored skin glare silently
back at him. 

Keeping my fucking arm, he thinks....
and grins.

1/9/09,  J. Piquette Jr.