Thursday, September 30, 2010


  Nantucket Number Nine
It had been a day of killing.
A day of     death.
A day of small lead masses
passing through flesh.
Projectiles careening off shattered bone
to penetrate piped organs
of non-musical note.
High velocity enforced deceleration
by way of visceral viscous   entropy.

And as he loads their lifeless bodies
into the bed of his waiting truck,
he vaguely notices how their
core temperatures match that which
radiates from the blued metal
of his spent shotgun.
It is only a moment
but as in entropy itself,
that too soon wanes.

And there in his gunmetal eyes
the reflection of a lead-shot sky
shifts from grey to black.
And soon he exists as solo entity,
   for here in the dark
there is nothing beyond himself.
Indeed, nothing exists which
cannot be seen at the end of a barrel.
His aim is to define
and there in the steel silhouette
   of his lead bead sight,
      they are game.
And what does the game define
if not him    in return?

Man holds dominion over the animal kingdom.
He sort of liked the sound of that.
Made him feel…  special.
Kind of like he was the chosen one.
King Dumb and his holy scepter
give unto that of wing, hoof and claw
   the gift   of light.
Successive bursts of ill lumination
via a spasm orgasm of twelve-gauge blasts.
Yes, well… here in the dark,
everything is black,
and what is your point of aim
if not the whole of blackness itself?

And here his eyes have grown dim
   for his vision is that of man,
and man has held court for far too long
   beside the luminous flame
there at the mouth of his cave.
From that flicker cast
across bison and elk, stampeding
there on his soot-stained ceiling,
to that which now emanates
from the mystic rectangle which
glows upon far distant wall.

Does man fear the dark?
Does he fear all those
undefined creatures
creeping forward from their
feral realm of sunless sanctuary?
Why… He is man, and
what is man if not   incandescent!
They with their puny brains…
What is man if not electric?
What is man if not cathode, anode
and that spark which arcs in between?

And he fills the need to flow; to stream.
To leave his mark upon the Earth.
Brass teeth part before his groin
and passing through, he
emerges from dark into dark in
    an arc of fluid release.
And there in that arc, he is a  sensation.
A sensation of    self. 
A brutal self-realization of what he
as man has unleashed upon this Earth.

And he drops to his knees in a
momentary genuflection to that
which he cannot    comprehend.
And he collapses to ground and
curls into a fetal position while
urine continues to spread from his loins.
There… There in the outer dark,
small irises open wide as
creatures   edge forth and  
bear witness to the fact that
man   does indeed    know pain.
Pain.
God made Man and Man made   barbed wire.
And Man said to himself,
“You know, that was pretty good,
but I think I can do   better.”

Man is subject to himself
   and all that he creates.

Enveloped    within darkness,
my father once mistakenly pissed
across    an electric fence.

Oh, I would like to think
it was a    somewhat appropriate
   religious    experience.    

©2010 Jack Hubbell

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