I am the boy who is tied down.

                        I am the moon.  A boy is tied down to a fence by his wrists
                        while two boys look on.
 
                        Sky bears down on the landscape like an open mouth.
                        The mountains sink into the earth. Shards of broken teeth.
 
 
            I am the smooth mahogany bar on which the boy’s small hands rest.
                        I stretch out to where the bartender lowers his head,
                        washing glasses.
 
                                    
                                    I am a combustion engine and each of my pistons starts
                                    a fire.  Laden with boys who trek outward of town
                                    
                                    toward a nothingness of dirt roads.  Chaos narrowly controlled.
 
 
I am the mind of a killer.  I carry a gun in the boy’s hand and like a puppeteer
I tell the boy what to say.
 
 
                                                            I am a bone of the body.  Every seven years
                                                            I am completely new and have no memory
                                                            of what came before.  If I am broken, I grow back.
                                                                        If I am shattered, the body absorbs me
                                                                                    or dies.
 
 
I am the boy tied to a fence and I have a deep wound for the world.
            There is autumn, there is sky, there is blood. The world is simple
            in the dark.
 
 
                                    I am the night.  I have more stars than there are names;
                                    if I listed them here you would forget them or move on.
                                                The night is not conventional time.  In the darkness I know
                                                you are capable of so much, so much.
 
I am the rescue. I swoop in, wordless, detached. I am things taken apart.
            I am the split of the rail and the rise of the body toward the light.
            I am the smell of blood.  I swoop in, wordless, detached.
 
 
                        I am the body and the wreck.
 
 
                                                            I am the failure of the body to remain a boy.
                                                            In the remains of failure, the body of a boy.
                                                            I am the remains of a boy, the body of his failure.
 
 
I am the field where the boy died, where he ruined the grass
            with his body and its blood.  The body is a heavy thing.
            It is given to me.
                        I take it in.
 
 
                                                I am the connection among all things.
 
 
            I am the alpha and omega, the dawn and its darkness, the beginning and the end.
 
 
I am a boy driving a pick-up truck out of town.  There is only one way to go.
            I drive two boys out of town to its edge, where fences mark the boundaries of
            ranchers’ lands.  I stop the truck.
                                                Dust settles around us as I lead the boys out.
 
 
                        I am a killer.  My hands are two big guns fully loaded.
                        I am a killer and I go into the night with a pair of hands that fire off shots.
                                  I smack him with the gun.  
                                  I smack him with the gun.  
                                  I smack him with the gun.
 
 
                                                I am the motion of the head pistol-whipped.
                                                The force of the blow creates equal, opposite reactions.
 
 
            I am canals of blood
            shunted out through the porous body, open and torn.
                        I am the brightness of pain, the loss of breath.
 
 
I am the white rejection of the world and the prayer of its vanishing.
 
 
            I am the noises of the boy
            choking on his own blood.
 
 
                                                I am the day before the boy is taken from the bar.
 
 
                        I am the last safe thought he had.
 
 
                                    I am a mess of stars, so careless, continuing to appear.
 
 
I am the boy who is tied down and he is me.
 
 
                                                I am the world of language, the signified world,
                                                where everything stands for something else.
 
 
                        I am the word, the concept, and the thing.
 
                                                
                                                            I am the past, the present, and future.
 
 
                                    I am the path from the truck to the fence, the body of the boy
                                    pushed down, picked up, pushed down.
                                                I am the halving of this distance,
                                                the half of that, the half of that.  As a path
                                    I refuse to let the boy reach the fence. But he always does.