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