Split the Lark & You Will Find the Music
In the spring of my first leaving an Onondaga longhouse
two men struggled to kill themselves what little was left
of their souls whipsawed ringside & res-sanctioned lights
blistered a mixed crowd all of it just another town scraped
out the prairie Monongahela whos-it-whats-its jostling
for a look through scribbled sight toward the sparkle
of two men’s encaged torsos we are better than this?
asked the woman next to me smelling so sweetly of strawberries
it would almost make a sick stomach hunger
NO EYES NO DICK KICKS NO GRABBING HOGS
yelled the scared crow of an officiator all but ignored
by the two men of muscle & leopard born supple
now rigid in their arms jack-in-the-boxes of unsprung
potential how many bodies are built upon the strong
foundations of pain ours rang red with the chorus of a butcher’s
floor spilled bucket tossed tooth & snout on oil-slick mats
here are the so-called tree loving hippies us vines around the trunk
of violence Natives against our own selves the smaller
fighter’s teeth knocked jagged as a fresh cut key
& now I see he is just a boy stumbling the man
next to me shouts a hurt dog barks whatever the fuck that means
before the blackout I skip out on the worst parts of myself
when I drive home I shake so hard I can barely hold the steering
& when I reach for the door of my last night in this home
I cannot remember why I decided to leave the fight
