Blood in the Water

Verbatim ventilation, he said, 

"And just what are you? 

  Some sort     of faggot?" 

No.   Oh, and 

here a flag on the play 

for this was simply no way 

to start a cordial conversation, 

   but then, 

I really don't think 

that the man 

with the stripes on his sleeve 

was ever much for refined repartee. 

Nay, that his tête-à-tête tend toward trauma 

  was likely dread intent. 

Fear & Despair unto we wee newts 

   o' neutered naiveté. 

Ripped from our mother's breast 

and savagely thrust unto 

that first five minutes of basic training. 

Cry foul for dank incontinence. 

Clinch butt for woe and behold.      

There. 

Yes, there at the front door. 

There at the first bunk. 

This one young man 

who only moments ago 

thought himself ever so clever 

for having claimed it. 

Here now, a group of drill sergeants 

explode through said portal 

like sharks in a feeding frenzy, 

ravenously ripping asunder 

every sad-sack they encounter. 

And while I tread water with 

the minimum of flipper agitation, 

that boy at the door 

exists in maelstrom of chum; 

his psyche now in vivid vivisection— 

   all for our viewing displeasure. 

There, his suitcase upended, inverted 

  and dumped upon bunk. 

There, its contents placed on public display 

  for rabid rut    and ridicule. 

And he, prior to this pending rent and rend, 

somehow thinking his 

experience of basic training 

might manifest monotonous. 

He, thus figuring it best 

to have brought literature. 

Indeed there in his suitcase, 

lies a paperback edition of 

Robert E. Howard's 

'Conan The Barbarian.' 

And of course, there upon its cover 

stands a buff and bare-chested Conan 

wielding a rather substantial sword. 

A butch barbarian clad in leather. 

"Oh, and just what are you? 

  Some sort of faggot?!" 

And there he stands, this man. 

   This boy. 

Spewing snot and tears. 

He reeling beneath 

enough Freudian devastation 

to last him a further twenty years. 

Oh, and what would Conan do, huh? 

Just what    would    he    do? 

Why he'd laugh. 

He'd roar.    He'd smite. 

       He'd      giggle. 

Giggle? 

There now. 

Further down the

baggage strewn bay of beds, 

someone begins     to giggle. 

And as one boy’s carcass 

dips to ever depressive depths, 

   said sharks swarm 

to converge upon another. 

This giggling other with actual 

   smile   upon his face. 

And who but a dancing dolphin 

would dare comprehend the joke? 

"What's so funny?! 

What is so mother-fuckin' funny?!" 

And here, a snarl of savage teeth 

encircle an equally bright 

   and toothsome smile. 

A smile… 

Here   amidst    apocalypse… 

Obscene seen   so serene. 

A smile.  

  

A smile? 

"What?!    

               What?! 

What's so fuckin' funny?!" 

And here, 

once profanity transitions 

from rant    to pant,

he o' blessed beatitude 

presently comes to speak. 

"I'm sorry, but 

it's just that I know how 

everything you're doing and saying 

  is nothing more    than an act. 

That in truth, I know 

you really don't want to hurt me— 

that you're only attempting 

   to break us." 

And though shark school drool 

doth pool 'bout the rest 

of us lesser dolphins, 

there mid-center maelstrom, 

someone's funny bone 

comes to catch 'tween 

gnash and gnaw of 

a gnarled yet neutered jaw. 

And while the rest of said sharks 

flaunt fin before face 

and chomp churn chum 

their taunt testosterone,

two with stripes

grab he who would smile 

and whisk him from 

our room o’ doom.

Dead. 

Dead.    Most 

surely dead. 

And yet, 

less than a month later, 

both I and a boy fond of 

   bare-chested men, 

see he who would smile 

   pass 

through the same gate as us. 

We of shark fin.

We of shark tooth. 

We of shark smile 

   and   

shark sanction. 

Set loose upon this mirthless world  

  to chum its water red.

Set loose upon its charnel carnivals, 

  ‘til all your clowns are bled. 

      

© 2016 Jack David Hubbell 

    ...Trampoline...

I am a boundless wonder what 

would happen should I fall, 

yet though this boney mass 

is doomed to hence collapse, 

I rise from bulbous ass, alas 

in attempt to bound again. 

Oh, and again. 

Yes, and again, 

though in truth, 

I gain at nothing. 

This life as zenith unto nadir, 

the wave which crests 

   before its trough. 

There below, I come to sink. 

There within, I come to swim. 

Forever born as flitting fish 

of whose scales evolve 

to feathered wing 

and there lift fowl aflight. 

Only to return anew to 

that fickle flounder 

of my nubile futile nature. 

Symbiotic oasis in 

aquatic aery stasis. 

Last spring unsprang, now sprung, 

though our lust precipitous, 

who of us would dare 

to merely stand upon 

a stagnant trampoline?

Who of us could resist the urge 

to launch into that vacant void 

which beckons ‘bove our heads? 

To heave and hurl awhirl with 

such furlough of abandon, 

ascent soon spent at apogee, 

for gravity grows grave gravitas  

as perigee comes to follow. 

The hurt before the spurt. 

The colic which follows the frolic. 

The somersault spasm that  

   collides with orgasm. 

Tra la, la-la la, trampoline! 

One can truly love a trampoline, 

but cannot love one another upon 

such ecstatic spastic elastic, when 

outcomes turn to titillated trauma. 

In truth, 

there can be only one, minus one, 

for two a-dash and pudenda bashed 

are often left bereft. 

Nay, but upon pained 

procreation cessation, 

that which came to rise, 

soon comes to plunge. 

For though we bound 

to climax together, 

we are woefully bound to fall. 

Each clammy crescendo 

a dunce denouement. 

Each moist meridian 

a dive into deep abyss. 

Folly la-la trampoline. 

We collide a la limb akimbo, 

and unplumbed succumb to fandango, 

for amidst said conjugal collision, 

we are bound 

to bond hip to hip 

with cervical certitude. 

And we plummet to concave canvas, 

toe to toe tossed taunt trampoline. 

And we bounce beatific and buoyant 

like bandied about bombardiers, 

there to detonate mind’s eye 

succumbed circumcision 

via mutually assured 

revulsion. 

Tra-la la-la la-la la-la 

tramp…o…line

obscene. 

Ó2018 Jack David Hubbell

   ...Precipice...

I really don’t mean to alarm 

but listen, 

back when I was a kid, 

we had this thing called “Death”. 

Indeed, if you 

simply bothered to look about, 

you’d notice hundreds of lifeforms 

perpetually transitioning 

to a life less life less life. 

For some of us, 

said plethora de la mort proved 

rather disconcerting.

Perhaps it was 

a given proviso that 

the perpetual death of a 

billion unseen microbes be 

conveniently rendered invisible. 

This surely an element of trauma 

we self-centric sightless souls 

have conveniently chosen  

to spare ourselves. 

And for this biologic presence of  

such mortal maggot gravitas,  

our blinkered sobriety

remains glaringly consistent. 

Best o’ my recollection, 

this somewhat persistent 

presence of Death rode rampant 

right up until the Fall of 1978. 

Indeed, until the close of that year, 

the E. Coli in my lower bowels 

had experienced fairly consistent 

   bacterial genocide, 

and this benefited not only I 

but the whole of humanity as well. 

The conveyor belt o’ carnage which we

came to know of as “The Vietnam War” 

had only recently come to pass 

and it therewith seemed 

a fortuitous moment 

to join the US military. 

And on that day of induction, 

both I and a multitude 

of militant men to be 

were mustered in one large lobby, 

there to await that mannish moment 

when other grown men of grit  

would gaze upon our 

assorted naked physiques 

in an attempt to ascertain 

whether we moot musketeers 

were partial to martial 

and spartan enough 

in carnal constitution, 

to possess the proper 

pyro-technique  

and steel shanked jingo flint 

to therewith spew stars 

from our spit-shined spangled dangles. 

We wanton warriors of lethal lust, 

there arrayed in chairs about 

the squall of a single television set 

bellowing Saturday morning cartoons. 

Queue a barrage o’ bongos 

for up there on that beaming screen 

was none other than “Jonny Quest”. 

And quite unlike my own mundane morass, 

Jonny lived an exhilarating existence 

of constant danger and intrigue. 

So much so that his father 

assigned him his own 

personal bodyguard. 

The guard’s name was “Race Bannon”, 

and if you threatened Jonny’s precious life, 

Race would happily take yours. 

Race was cool that way, and hey!, 

what’s not to like about a cartoon character 

that always has an assault rifle 

just within arm’s reach? 

And indeed up there on that screen, 

Jonny was currently threatened by 

   a gaggle of ghastly goons. 

Indeed, there Race grits and grabs 

his flagellated phallus… er… no… rather 

Race grabs his assault rifle and… but wait. 

The screen suddenly does a jump-cut, 

and all those goons are oddly sprawled 

about on the grisly ground. 

Incongruous.  

What has just happened?

Enforced sap   nap time? 

Bullet born forlorn and 

gun-porn unduly scorned?

Violence vilely violated? 

No testicular depletion of Bannon’s 

raunchy thirty-round magazine? 

Forsooth, those goons had all surely died 

but someone up in cartoon heaven 

had decided that we wee tykes 

need now be spared 

a certain cartoon reality. 

Moments later and “Wile E. Coyote” 

is chasing a particular bird down a 

particular mountain road 

when he finds himself suspended mid-air 

just off the edge of a massive precipice. 

And a magical second later,  

he drops, plummets, plunges. 

He falls and falls and falls to a 

most certain cartoon death and yet… 

He does not hit the ground. 

There is no tiny 

puff     of      dust.

And one would surely surmise 

that on this late date in 1978, 

someone had censored death 

not only from all cartoons, 

but the whole 

of existence 

in general. 

That all of us being inducted into 

the military that day 

would never ever die. 

Yet in truth, I knew better. 

Indeed later that day 

I stepped off a dire precipice of 

mine own unique making, 

and like Wile E. Coyote, 

I’ve hung here mid-air 

for what amounts to 

one complete lifetime. 

I ever aware 

of that mortal moment 

my feet will come to drop, 

delivering unto me 

a preordained destiny: 

my death 

in a puff

of dust. 

Ó2019 Jack David Hubbell