Vampire's Bite

Vampire’s Bite

Bukowski always said, “Don’t do it, unless
you can’t help it,” as I find myself scribbling
madly on a napkin, a 3x5 card, or scraps or sheets
or rolls of paper, anything that is receptive
to capturing those damned verbal insects,
that disturbing imagery, the honeyed feelings
I had while shaving, that abstract line of prose
that rose with the sun, a reworked lyric or line
from a movie, someone else’s cleverness,
a tattered corner of my emotional scrapbook,
some muddled memory struggling up for air,
those few good artists who love to paint Indians,
my constant fascination with native mythology
and magic and red dust, bright colored feathers,
the owl dance, the stomp grounds, commodity cheese,
Navajo blankets, Hopi hand-made pottery,
cliff pueblos, the roots of jazz,
Robert Johnson and 37 kinds of Delta Blues
with slide guitar riffs echoing into the fog in front
of me, and behemoth breasts beautiful as new ship keels
bursting huge from the silver screen of the Drive In
that is now a ticky-tacky row of Condos;
remembering how my hunting knife felt this morning
in the flat of my palm, heavy at the leather wrapped
hilt, the name “Killer” stamped deep
into the blood slit of the nickel-plated shiny blade,
with a lethal row of serrated teeth hungry and bare
near the handle; a joke really since I only actually killed
some ants, a couple frogs, several robins, a thousand spiders,
twelve snakes, some fish,
a doe, a dog, one cat, my health—hardly anything
of consequence in this life, but yes,
simmering strongly beneath my long lashes
genetic memories, throbs of my darkest naked instincts
make it triple clear that death has been no stranger
to these strong hands, these eyes, this heart—
that now weeps at every shred of sentiment,
even more so as my stride shortens, my hearing
diminishes, my hair grays, my arteries harden,
my reach barely equals my grasp;
how I habitually slip through the pre-dawn indigo
tingling with alacrity,
watching nervously for those constabularial sharks
who might, who can spring from concealment
and snag one of our group, flock, brace, troop—
bellicose and bulbous, behaving like sliver-buckled
voracious sun-glassed lions leaping
on our thin metal backs with guns drawn
and claws out; or more, the pungent air itself
pregnant with spring the season, full upon us,
covering the bright redness of my truck
with the softness of many-colored blossoms,
or pounds of thick yellow pollen, randy and ready
for all forms of gestation,
teasing these old bones like a tart,
sexy and alluring with the promise of summer,
despite the chill and ice I face
alone early in my alley
as the fog of my breath mantles
the single star visible over my garage,
and the noise a small plane engine makes
hidden in the clouds as it searches for a landing strip
I cannot see, but I know must be somewhere close—
capturing, explicating,illuminating divers icons
of one day, begging to be tallied, stroked, consumed,
digested, and assimilated --begging like a sultry
seductive sinuous bitch to become
poetry.

Hell, Charles, I guess it’s true,
and I just can’t help myself,
so I will just keep doing it,
until I go blind, or die, or grow a third arm,
or learn to walk through solid walls
scattering molecules
like a dart through dandelions.

Glenn Buttkus April 2009