Today

From Menletter January 2008

By Peter Bormuth

Today

my heart is withered

a paralyzed gray vole in the teeth of a cat

Today

i am drinking dust

and in the wine glass

the great sucking mouths of eels

Today

the happiness of rainbows is handcuffed

In the fireplace the panther

has left soot & pee & the shadow

of a cold toothless smile

Today

the children put their tongues

on frozen metal fences

and the snow is speckled with fear

Today

i wish i were a rag

or a bundle of bones

or a fire in a barrel

warming the junkie

in the abandoned warehouse

Today

we celebrate a pestilence

a vagina full of shards of glass

an animal with soft weeping eyes

and rabid breath

Today

customs are the errors

of prior generations

crystallized into a cancer

of habit and sound

Today

the umbilical cord is radioactive

ears brimming with biblical feces

we do not hear the shrieks of the ocean

a green solar howl

Today

anger is a fishhook

lacerating my intestines

Today

it is the Christ-mass

and i want to die

If i were asleep

i could go shopping at suburban malls

or drive a hurtling car

through the overcrowded dark

If my eyelids were replaced with copper pennies

i could watch comedies and commercials

i could stare at gladiators

striking each other with swords

I could eat hams and pot roasts

I could clap as giants devour our children's bodies

and religious jackals gnaw at their bones

But I am awake, a pantheist

and tonight from the edge of a swamp

dense with young willows

I will call the wild geese

whose feet stir the dark waters

whose beaks peck at the ice

encroaching to trap them

I will light a small fire

so their shadows can dive

through the terror

to bring up the muck

to begin a new world.

Editor's note: Peter is a Pantheist with a deep love of nature. As Peter B, he has issued two CDs of his songs. You can see and hear parts of his CD, "Homeland Security," and read his bio at http://cdbaby.com/cd/peterbmusic1. His other CD, "Ngagspa," is at http://cdbaby.com/cd/peterbmusic2. Thanks to Sparrow Hart for introducing him to me.