Pacemaker by Randolph Chabot Jr.

It seems in silence that the better things are born.
The dull ache can only tarry the coming of the morn.
Should skin be falling off while the heart is speeding?

Whispering! the note worth holding

Is the one worth needing.

Sir you have a blindspot
Buddy you’ve got an oilslick
Brother you’ve got a bloodclott
Dang right I’m love sick

Love should be sick
Only if its pregnant.
Suffering from pains of straining horizon
Love is a little one of the greater Love rising

I’ve got engines for veins
You have rockets for walkers
Our Father the Mover
The Void filling talker.

Sir should skin be falling off while the heart is speeding?

A stillness echoed, the note worth holding

Is the note worth needing.

Labels: Golly Gee

Meat by Randolph J. Chabot Jr.

In between seven kingdoms
Where all their borders met.
Laid a carnival of flesh a meat market.

A truly beautiful place with ivory hanging wet,
Dripping organs into seekers heavy set
Stomachs with arms inside their prison guts.
Pushing hands through making peek holes with their cuts.

Everyone praised it for its carnal glow.
Kings and autoworkers bow to it and crow,
At the young moon hiding the face of a slave,
A nurse, or a princess, a doll costume knave.

This bluish slate leaving limbs detached
Keeping mangle arts secret keeping scraping screens latched.

It was my first trek to that holy city.
Ten thousand meat slabs hanging, evoking pity.
Such beauty and terror should not coincide
Each body a pearl to find and to hide.

At the pure sight I vomited and shook.
At the very thought of that prophesied look.
My hands and my body twitched harder even still.
Arms were dragging me, insulting my will.

They pulled me over to a hanging disaster.
Their nails grabbed my eyes, “behold son your master!”
Then by my hair they yanked up my gaze.
Whip Crack! Her scream that lasted an age.

I cried as I stared, it was Love, my mother, my keeper so dear.
She looked at me softly and whispered, “Your click brought me here.”

Today at work there was a mouse who did his business on the table where we eat. Needless to say we were a little grossed out. I mean bubonic plague, do we want a repeat of the Middle Ages (all though I would kill to wear a sword and a tunic and not be mocked openly in public)? The girls got out their nuclear/chemical/hellfire and brimstone hazmat suits and bleached the table white enough to be a fashion junky stuck in Billy Idol bleach blond for the past 20 years (holy hair day batman)! So everyone was up in arms, they tried cheese but the mouse was too crafty and got away unscathed. The Audacity! "Try peanut butter, cheese whiz; yeah get his little feet stuck in there!" Were the shouts I heard in the back round accompanied by laughter and much merry making. One man even went as far as to say that if he did not get it tonight with his cleverness he would get his 22 and night vision goggles to hunt it in the attic himself. I was a little disturbed. The mouse is so little, and do not get me wrong I can see why a mouse would have to die. I lived in real low income housing for awhile and my front door had a hole in it big enough to let a bison in through. I actually sat down on my floor and watched ants file in one day, it was kind of funny. Anypoop, I am saying that when there are brown recluse spiders in your house I am going to probably kill them. You can say different but once one has crawled on your booty you might say different (a bite from this type of spider can make a part of your body rot practically off. I am not saying I have a really nice butt or anything, but if I was missing a cheek think of the problems I would have sitting and finding pants). So sometimes things die I am o.k. with that sort of, but that does not mean that we are ever allowed to be brutes about it.
In Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky the main character Raskolnikov has a dream in which a peasant named Mikolka decides to flog his old horse to death just because it is his. He piled everyone he could find into his cart and tried to force the old horse to pull all of them. The onlookers laughed and cheered him on as he beckoned like a deranged ringleader, come one come all! Even those who told him he was cruel in the beginning laughed when the horse tried to actually move the cart. We as humans are kind of like that sometimes. Why do we laugh when others suffer? Why do we call the people that we war against animals? How can we say it is out right just because it is ours? I have never fought in a war before, but I can tell you what; if I did I would not hate my enemies. I would not kill with malice and hatred in my heart. Even if it was a man like Saddam Hussein or Stalin who killed untold thousands I would be sad to have to kill them. Sad that they had become what they had become, sad that I had become them, sad that we live in a world where others decide it is o.k. to kill. Screw that it is o.k. to kill sometimes. I do not care what your reasons are. There is something shocking about it that will mess with your head and will scar your soul. I used to hang out with homeless people when I lived in Minneapolis, and met a guy who had been a sharpshooter in Vietnam. This man lived with his little boy on the streets and drank himself to sleep every night. He told me at about 3:00 am in the downtown city square known as the Music Hall that he could see the faces of the people he had shot getting blown off every night. He said he had shot women and children and he could not help but regret it but look at it. But look at the half faces and contorted looks of pain like an excerpt from Hades.
So what is it in me that strains my neck to look at a car wreck that can watch the testing of atomic bombs without flinching? Gladiator fights, public hangings, horror movies, I enjoy gore just as much as the next guy, but it has started to weird me out lately. So in the words of Sufjan Stevens “the State is advocation!” I am not saying the rest of the world is terrible and I am so high mighty look at me and my untouchable holiness, be gone mere mortals. I am terrible too. I just want us to be bright; do I really want to be kind? Do you?