White Man says
“Out there the ground is rich as gophers
and the flesh goes on for miles,
wave after wave of alabaster and hair,
and the hunting is thick and quick and fierce.”
So I say goodbye to the Antfarm and the backroads
and a nice little town like ours,
and ride out, still wet behind the ears,
on a white horse until it blisters blood red
and bursts.
Hide out at night under floorboards
and in the dust
the entire time the White Man’s words come back
in echoes and in whispers
and in a hot, sweet taste in my mouth.
Ever onward, braving nightmares drawn to my shadows
like sharks to blood,
challenging great gynopshinxes
with their seductive riddles and enigmatic deaths,
the whole time burning with a fever
that eats me like a hunger and wears down my fiber.
Forever after the Great Land of the White Man’s words,
where the streets stink with opportunity
the Centipedes are huge and abundant
and the snails leave trails as thick as clay.
I push on, past the blister in the bone
till I bleed light, and all that I have left
are the holes where things are taken from me,
knowing it’s got to be near,
this land past the desert
past the Frontier
where the ships come in on a lysergic sea.
their sails full of the breath of life
“Ou la sont le merde ou la sont le vie!”
Knowing I can find it, I can make it,
I’ll get there,
if I can just get past this flesh,
if I can just get past memory
if I can just melt away in hot lumps,
if I can just bash myself apart,
IF
if I could just get up and walk…
