In the city where I was born
In the city where I was born
The ass bone of a Clydesdale is flung
Far beyond the memories
Of the native made homeless
By the commercial of cattle
Grazing unaware of their fate.
In the city of stainless steel legs
Above the Mississippi
Running muddy and deep in mire
Of filth and casinos tied to the bank
They are inducing the poor
To try their hands at a bit of easy coins.
Here in this city I want to remove
The levels hugging her skin,
The dead skin of her puberty
That keeps poverty warm,
The level of dried blood
On the knife edge of crime,
The level of teeth as yellow as the moon,
The moon as yellow as the heart,
The heart as yellow as the breath,
The breath as yellow as the
Remembrance of a daisy torn from the
Curiosity of a fly feeding on a cadaver.
The yellow teeth biting the cloud
To squeeze out rain that is falling
On the homeless huddled under
a worn blanket inside of their card board boxes
Beside the heat vents that exhale
Its wounded breath of steam
I dig into the wee hour barking its discontent
Against my advance
The wee hour of politeness
Ripping my flesh from the bones
To know that I am not alone
In the secrets of my skin
The politeness of a dirty hand
Soiled from honest work
The honest work of the hands of reality
The reality that scrapes by parading itself
Before the convulsion thrown up in the wee hour
Of a criminal night seeking to kill
The dark man under the cover of darkness
The darkness of drums draped in the dungeon
The dungeon in the belly of a slave ship
The slave ship that feed its captives
On fast food in a hungry year
I expose the dirty kids feeding
On government cheese and peanut butter
I expose the level of muscles
That sweats against the machines
With their gears and greasy motion
Grinding their noise of defiance
That deafens the ears in a procreation of
Birthing more and more machines
I expose the level of bricks and concrete
And asphalt and limestone homes
Huddle together in the small rain
Of a light bulb
I expose the French names
Of her streets alone the
River Des Peres of fathers
Who have abandoned their children
To the guardianship of industries
I expose the smell of steam boats
Curing in the veins of history
I expose the labor of immigrants
From Germany, Bohemia and Ireland
That ran from the potato famine
And found a home where the streets
Was paved with poverty and the hungry
Hands of workers caked with the
Blood of machines and the children
Was put to work in the factories
Of the a b cs of a work a day world
I expose the blood of Bloody Island
I expose the cottontail rabbits
And the nightly soldering of the opossum
And the sleeping Eastern Gray squirrel
And the coyotes urbanized
The peeper was singing in the low lands
The cicadas was hidden in the Hickories
I expose the unabashable stare of a baby
Nursed by the machines that suckles
At the sweat dripping from the scraps
Of human kindness used to water the night
When the night comes and wrap up the
Sparrows from their flight bonded
By the neighborhood of little Italy
Smelling of maroon macaroni
Then and only then will the blue jay
Circle the roofs of red brick homes
Stingy with their warmth and broken
Window glass that rips the throat
Of pigeons roosting in the abandoned
Building that house the homeless
Huddled in the corner of their God given soul
The soul that hunger for salvation
The salvation that hunger for redemption
The redemption that hunger for a filled belly
Then and only then will the sorcerer
With his prodigious propensity
For bestial needs hatch the yellow
Circle of an old man’s eyes
I expose red bricks and stately limestone
Steely in their stance along the manicured streets
Where papa death waits
To take the meek and the poor
Stuffed with pain stuffed with indifference
Stuffed with everything that ills the poor
Stuffed with the broken bottles sparkling
Beneath the moon of an old washer woman’s hands
I expose the ribs of my city’s back bone
Ribs of the root zone where worms
Feed on the waste of the body
I expose the hard fist of nature
The brutal beating of a boy
Beating back the back water
Of a stagnant pond full of tears
I expose the rusted underbelly of machines
That can not cease their rhythm of creation
Of making cars and wary printing presses
And pictures of a God printed in white
By the tenderness of the melancholy hands of a ditch digger
Machines that refuse to stay their all day motion
Grinning well into the plastic night where
The babies are asleep in barrels of oil
Oil of our ever demanding needs for creature comfort
Comfort at the expense of a burgeoning nature
Nature forever lustful forever fearless
Forever rotting her advance
It is not enough to sleep on a mat on the floor
In Americus
It is not enough to cook by fire wood in Americus
It is not enough to fill your belly with rice and fish caught by the hands in Americus
In Haiti the poor are eating cookies made of yellow dirt
While it is not enough in Americus to get the things of a poor man buying his time till the kingdom come
I expose that the American poor is rich
by the stander of the torturous hunger of Nairobi
I expose a man eating pizza crust from the dumper
Picking cigarette butts with lip stick on them from the ash tray
I expose the sign that reads I will work for food but there is no labor to be had
Other then the slave wage of a day worker fresh across the border
I expose the mother praying that her unborn child have lighter skin
Lighter skin of the pure half blood
The pure blood dark as the blood of Africa
Africa blood of the Caribbean, Guatemala, Belize
Of Honduras and Nicaragua
Africa blood of New York, Florida, Georgia
Of Texas and California
The Africans I expose you for who you are
You are the fathers of my fathers
You are the blood line of my skin
I expose you to the world
You are the scars of the whip
You are the amputated limb to run away as you do
You are more then I can ever name
You are the survivor in the American grain
You have worked the fields and it brought forth fruit
You built the universities and they brought forth knowledge
Africans of the world where does your legion lie?
I expose that Americans have poor taste in a rich country
Fast food feeds the palette, junk food nourish our children
I expose the cruelty that man do to man to woman to children to kin of the blood we kill the ones we love
In Americus the blacks are killing the blacks
In Americus the Latin are killing Latin
In Americus the whites are killing us all
We kill the enthusiasm of gratitude
We kill the rhetoric of suffering
We kill the victorious ancestral dawn of a fat belly
We kill the naked triumph of tadpoles
We kill the ancestral nourishment of turtle doves
We kill the bullshit of prostitution
We kill the voyages that uproot the Christianized sleep kneading before a humming bird feeding at the ovaries of flowers
I expose the testicles of the sexual waters
I expose the voices of machines that lull the babies to sleep
I expose the gentle fatigue that hangs on the backs of the poor who do not care that their finger nails are full of dirt, yes the homeless in their home city town
I expose of the luminous clamor of the trembling of electricity found in the heart of the living
I expose the foundation of breathing a breath that conquering the antelope of femininity
I expose the virtues that survive in the germination of a seed
I expose the essence of man’s ignorant sold enclosed in the light of the television to the survival of the poor, yes the poor who are a wound on the American soul
I expose the joint that cracks its knuckles full of grief
I expose the reincarnated heart that prays for the salvation exposed by the limitation of the executor who built his church on the ruins of a meditation
I expose the brave man with his succulence heart he is the killer of a unique headiness of fragrant found under a toad stool
I expose the belt of the future tied around the Obstinacy of hunger
I expose the promises made to the Indians, a promises of vigor entrenched in the ravenous orchards and bountiful fields of prairie grass
And the empty anger of a drunken herd
I expose the audacity of the blemishes of leprosy of the immense instant dying by the hands of a mechanical clock
I expose the innocent of water and the scars of the sky, its wounds and defiance beautiful as the scents of clouds arbitrary in their strength
I expose the apocalyptic injury of volcanoes suffering from the parasite that lives on the monopoly of the ancestors who died by the whip
I expose the avian flu jumping spices, smuggled into the blood by chicks held in cages
I expose the back ache of the common cold that is allergic to light and strong freedom curling like a serpent around the south end of a stony rain
I expose the art of poetry forever left out, leaving something of itself left out
I expose the absolute great void that can not be known and the man that can not know himself for secret that his unconsciousness keeps
I expose the frigidity of the scripture that keeps us in line against the rhythm of all religion that cause you to laugh that the gays can not wed in the church of the golden cross
I expose the belief in the one God of a queer tongue
The one God of ominous murder
The one God of inventing lungs
The one God of unequal fire in the belly
The one God of freckle face reason
I expose the four destiny of man
The destiny of walking upright in a bent over year
The destiny of planting in a furrow field far from home
The destiny of using bones as a tool and tools as the back bone of our building
The destiny of healing the sick of their masters’ chains
I expose the man laboring beneath the weight of Gods as a monkey on his back
I expose the hunger of Zen born again and again
I expose the man beneath the common burden of surrendering the swamp of his embrace to the one God of furious purity, yes to one God of water running between the tights of the mountains where the other Gods are strip mining for new souls to worship at the breast of nature
I expose man for what he is meat of the world, beast of the beast that can not know itself for the secrets of the flesh kept in the skin pocket of his spirit
I expose the environment of pestilence drilling its voice into the hurricane when the body horde its despair separated from the self when the self is hidden behind notion that woo the Gods
I expose the joyous yet unexpected by compromise wisdom found in the need for sexual desires that can not get over itself and will express the excess of violent that vomit the wisdom of the Gods
Innocence of an avalanche of abyss in the midnight gathered together in the pocket tied with the string of the baobab
I expose the inodorous madness of war with its docile rifles pointed at the sun
I expose the invisible absence wandering between galaxies in the savage distance that God put between us
I expose the death rattle inhaled from a warm gun entangled in the chemical absolute of bankrupt
I expose the birds nesting in my grave, the rabbits that have built their homes there, the bees feeding on the flower there, the worms digging tunnels there, the dog that piss on my tomb stone
I expose the clumps of night idle with nothingness
I expose the machine of my body born bare but with bones soft as a drunk hibiscus growing heavy in the hour that the virgin surrender her virginity to the complications found in the silence colorless and tepid and streaked with the emptiness of a shudder shouldered by the everything dying of things
--
David E. Patton has appeared in
Mad Blood, The James White Review, Calliope Nerve, Rocky Mountain Arsenal of the Arts, Bay Window, 7, and
Guide. His chapbook,
Milk Bowl Moon over St. Louis, appeared in 2003 from
Persistencia Press. His current book of poetry and art
The Trinity is available by contacting the author. Also an accomplished painter and sculptor, Patton currently resides in his hometown of St. Louis.
