Arcade

Walter says that in reality, 

people are best shot in the head. 

And though I’ve no reason to doubt 

his more than capable aim, 

I rather take exception to 

his concussed concept of said reality. 

That he would look upon humanity 

and see nothing but flitting silhouettes… 

Lessor tin figures of indiscriminate shape, 

darting to-and-fro across 

the backdrop of some carnival’s rifle arcade. 

They not of facial feature but 

concentric ring and prized bull’s eye.

They not of mind but melon. 

They of cranial seedless cavity; 

ripe repository for 

the bullet of his being. 

And here Walter eases back the slide 

of his ballistic sadistic self, 

stripping round from magazine 

and routing it to the maw 

of his oral discharge chamber. 

And perhaps you’ve come to ponder 

   Walter’s liable lethal intent, 

but such malignant thought would infer 

that he was somehow human, 

yet such menace of mind 

   is not born of mankind 

for the fact that boner of man born bone  

   do not kill   people. 

No, gun born by boner kills people. 

And what is Walter if not a gun?

What is Walter if not trigger, 

a hammer, 

   a barrel, 

      a muzzle? 

What is Walter’s maniacal mouth 

if not itself  mayhem  un-muzzled? 

What is his caliber of being 

if not that of magnum force? 

What is his projectile opinion 

if not full of hollow points? 

His balletic bullet statement bone honed,  

careening rot thought    dot to dot. 

Nay for Walter a gun is a gun is a gun 

is a bazooka, a canon, a battleship, 

is a thermo    nuclear    warhead. 

Fifty mega-tons of id fed mental mass. 

Gas blast fecal flatulence 

afoul his shit-head sense of self. 

Uncensored surreality, 

shotgun spray and societal spit 

of obit… obit… obit. That’s it. 

Gatling-gun fundamental ill-will; 

a cyclic rate o’ sick;

a lewd tattooed body-count 

points and potential accrued; 

a rifled screw rude, 

spun gun-metal blued; 

fifty rounds o’ lead unladen 

spiral jism spewed a scatter-shot skewed. 

Erectile pumped dum-dum slug through 

a lead-bled cerebellum and its errant 

chicane about the brain.

Train of feigned mind now insane. 

His profane bane sustained via 

some token torpedo tally 

de la mort. 

Married to the glow of that 

screen arrayed before him, 

his eyes now blink in syncopation 

to an icon’s vibrant strobe. 

Indeed, 

our Lady of Perpetual Reload 

would like Walter to select self-benediction, 

and recharge thine divine 

   unholy pistola 

anew, anow and anon. 

Yet Walter here now chooses to 

program pause instead, and 

one of many layers within 

his spastic virtual reality 

grinds bone to bone and halts. 

Suppressing the urge to urinate, 

Walter rests his game controller 

atop persistent piss hard-on,  

thrusts phallic fist down digit-deep 

within some family-sized bag of Cheetos 

and crams a handful into his face. 

And there… 

   there… 

Just there at that 

malignant moment

when he begins 

to choke and gag, 

what is that blessed expression 

upon Walter’s contorted face 

if not concentric ring upon ring 

and an oh so prized bull’s eye? 

2018 Jack David Hubbell