Nice work if you can get it – rippling thighs,

tight haunches, eight-pack glistening with dew,

the lats and traps and triceps neatly sized – 

proportional from every point of view,

no bulk all cut. Watch water weight dissolve

and all that’s left is raw potential force,

a gleaming flexed parabola revolved

on hidden axes, waves that meet no shore.

The shapes may change, Pythagoras might say,

the meat and sinew, protein alter form

but yet retain identity. No way

could bodies this rock-hard keep someone warm:

Brad Pitt in Fight Club, torso of Apollo,

The Rock, the Terminator, Dolph, John Rambo.

“If we meet again in the next life you will be

my sworn enemy. And I will show you no mercy.”

— The Master

We each have the key, the ingredient, the flaw

to prove the other’s weakness. Our undoing

is unavoidable, the turning past unreachable

behind the border of a veil of what we once were.

You have polarized me, energized and the fault

is half mine, the hand or the globe that smashes

again and is pulverized back in turn.

Nemesis was a goddess, you know – it’s a proper name.

No brother could be closer, the tightest connection

between your skull and my fist around a stone.

There's a finger on the switch but

it's not yours.

We imagine there's a center that

wraps the cord.

The voltage peaks red where

the clipping starts.

The pressure builds in air

at the pumping heart.

The levels rise and fall and

then average out.

The amplitude is gone.

You lose the count.

Slap back ring will spook

the unprepared.

The signals change, the mute

is always there.

after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The cup goes tumbling, end over end

past the precipice, past the high jackboots,

past the first and third and nineteenth bloody Reich,

past family, past eros, past zeppelins,

past sepulchres in Venice and in Petra,

past administrators, ticket-takers, Oberguppeführers,

past strike-slip faults, past lithosphere,

past sequels, past reviews, past sweet nostalgia

to land in ether, miasma mattress-soft,

the formless deep before the definition,

the mystery enigma codex keep

defying elucidation, endless sleep

of reason answers canon afterthought

and there we lose the grip of it and fall

at last and let forever slip away.

The murder mystery. A threnody.

A little upskirt is the death of me,

a little black lace while tying the boot.

A cock of the hammer, the sluice in the chute,

a thrum of the strings, bow knocking the wood.

It’s tough to be bad. It’s worse being good.

The pond by the lake house, tumbled slats,

fatback grease running down some back fat.

A single blue vein down the length of a shaft,

a packed seam of coal. And yes, I mean packed.

A rude awakening, an arab strap.

A stress then release. A long winter’s nap.

We’re mostly impervious – the system functions

under its own power. We could barely stop

the machine if we wanted to, but who would ever

dare or desire to break it down?

We have flight – we practically invented it

and got as far as the moon. We paused for a while

but you better believe we could do it again

if we ever needed something up there.

Bullets don’t exactly bounce off us,

but they do bounce back, harder and faster.

Fire and blood is how we were born –

and then we learned to work its magic.

Our sight and hearing is unparalleled –

a whispered conversation half a world away.

And to our credit, it is very selective.

We can turn a blind eye at any time.

And should it ever come to that,

we’ll protect this world at any cost –

there’s a secret pocket in this uniform

that holds the No-Gun and the Zero-Bomb.

You can trust us because we told you so.

You can believe our ideals because why not.

You can worship at our altar, a foot on your neck.

You can say the pledge because you have no choice.

We are all bound together

close as knots.

The matter that makes us up

is intertwined

with the universe.

Pistil and stamen

rose and bloom

flora and fauna

we are one.

Which makes it

all the more surprising

that the string

can be untied;

that I do the untying.

Of the forces we know

of the hurricanes of energy

of the particles and strengths

there can be no division.

Until there is.

Until I do.

When Halloweenhead

and The Shipbuilder

wind up for the punch

I don’t blink.

I don’t think before

the sinews and muscles

the ligaments and tendons

the coefficients of friction

and coefficients of drag

and the covalent bonds

and corpuscles of cells

and the chromosomes

and deoxyribonucleic acids

and the free radicals

and the mitochondria

and the femtocells

split and tear and shower

like confetti in a ticker-tape

parade of organisms

too small for blood to splatter

or make a sound,

too small for any human sense

even amplified by nano-technology

to register and notate

that anything at all had happened.

It’s called the strong interaction

or strong nuclear force.

They say I control it

the way locusts control wheat

the way plague controls states.

I don’t feel like a locust.

I don’t feel like a plague.

I only feel the wind whistle

through my empty hands.