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Magnolia
Magnolia
- Hello? hello?
into his ear, afraid that hes died on me. in what he calls my ingenious ingenue-ity,
I do not notice that he is still breathing,
so i just continue whispering, impatient, furried by his silence.
And he rises suddenly and I shrink back with a yelp at his sudden motion.
Disintegrates under my warmth, clutching him close,
asphalt amped and jarring, steamy are the skies, even if the storms float of radiator fumes.
Hubcaps biffing Frishee Nuts, Kite Flyers, Leary Alcoholics fired for vermouth and vodka,
and nondistilled 90-proof sorghum.
Hands stained bloody with the flowing tide, pressing down on his chest,
pumping life back in and out. Worlds nailed down.
I watch the clouds move across his darkening eyes.
Away from light. Away from death.
- Towards hurt.
He takes my hand, curling one fist from two
palm on palm, wrist on wrist,
peacefully mixed,
while his life pools around him in a scarlet puddle, leaking motor oil around
the bullet wound dug deep.
Lying spread out against the grassy springtime rubble
beneath a sky spread out with an evening blanket
of polluted stars shining sickly in the nuclear light.
Grips my hand in his, folded like a
star-streaked banner red and white and blue across his chest,
that flag he used to love so much
enveloped by lilies, blood, cornflower.
Exploding in a fiery pyrotechnic display, a holocaust
that destroyed Our World.
Worlds too petulant.
But we have to drive for it, he tells me. We have to destroy it or it will destroy us.
Oh, well.
And when I wake, the Dream collapses.
A shot right in the face of the American Dream. Bang!
A lifetime of messing things up fixed with one determined flash.
The final gunshot was the exclamation point, a final report to mark the END.
The line begins to blur. Just the other day
I saw the world ablaze. (On television, of course.) Pillars of fire lit up under the sun in London.
Flaming towers of burning steel, melting in the cold compress of aviation fluid in Washington, DC.
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
And in the Mojave mushroom clouds surge forth alongst ruined horizons,
ushering in the whipping bite of nuclear winters.
Fimbulvetr descending like snow from post-apocalyptic dawn.
A world in flames, a world collapsing like a fist rising above the world to pound down on it,
envelop all the light, a tree of life, blooming, blooming like a plague.
A world encaged in monolithic blocks of ice. Rendered insensible in the freezing heat.
And now I am dying with my life burning out around me.
Only her left. Only Amy.
Eyes like pooled shadows
under deep forest canopies shut out with deadened life,
green with flecks of black,
staring down at me. Watching over me. This cant be how it ends.
This is a great way to die.
And it makes me wonder,
what is it that keeps me going. Her dazzling pace?
Her curving way?
That terrible TTHuUuUuUndeRRRR roaring in my head.