...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 self, 

strips round from magazine 

and routes it to the maw 

of his oral discharge chamber. 

 

Perhaps you ponder the liable

   of Walter’s latent lethal intent, 

but such malignant thought would infer 

he was somehow inherently human, 

yet such menace of mind 

   is not born of mankind 

for the fact that boner 

   of man born of bone  

   does not  kill  people. 

Rather, gun born by boner 

   is prone. 

 

Oh, 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 testicular bullet statement 

now ballistic bone-honed,  

careening thought rot 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 

with points and potential accrued; 

a rude rifle screwed, 

spun gun-metal blued; 

fifty rounds o’ lead unladen 

spiral jism spewed a scatter skewed. 

Erectile pumped dum-dum slug through 

a lead-bled cerebellum and 

its mushroom 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 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 dead bull’s eye? 

 

Ó2018 Jack David Hubbell

 

   ...That Day I Lost my Soul...

In hindsight, 

I should have killed him. 

Indeed, had I done so, 

this world as we know it 

might have been 

significantly altered. 

But listen: 

I was all of six years old, 

and my pending cultivation of 

   homicidal mindset 

had as yet    come to be. 

Patience. 

 

No, I rather figure it was 

meant to be a religious experience. 

It being Easter and all. 

Painted eggs. 

Chocolate bunnies. 

Shallow graves. 

 

My being a Cupid-esque, 

cherub-faced bow-hunter 

was only deemed lethally apropos 

on days other than that 

of Valentine’s. 

Quiver o’ arrows superfluous,

nay Artemis be damned, 

for the Herculean labor 

of which I had been tasked 

was none other than 

an Easter Egg hunt.

 

And this, my first 

professional ovum scrum. 

Indeed, at six years of age 

I’d decided that specialized 

egg acquisition 

would be my life’s work. 

Oh, not that I’d merely subsist 

on the consumption of omelets. 

No, that would be silly. 

 

Listen: the eggs I’m talking about 

were profoundly eerie and 

arcane by nature. 

They of other-worldly colors 

gone   cryptic   calligraphic. 

Necronomican 

gestated ovarian offal. 

Compulsion and    revulsion 

in equal letch affect. 

 

And some… yes....

Some were even gold!

‘Course, a lot of those gold ones 

were in truth made entirely of plastic. 

But hey! 

You could trade those 

special gold eggs in 

for real live baby rabbits, 

chickens, ducklings and buffalo. 

So yea, professional Easter Egg hunting 

  could be profitable. 

 

In hindsight, 

I suppose I took for granted 

all those prior years of training, 

with my mother and father 

surreptitiously hiding eggs 

throughout our bucolic backyard, 

then releasing the untethered   id of I 

to careen through 

screen-door and outward, 

under the loving parental blitz catalyst 

of administered meth-amphetamine. 

 

Focus adjust and psyche concussed, 

it had not been for naught. 

For here now, 

I was ready for prime-time. 

I at peak physical heat. 

Steroid rage engaged. 

I and around   a hundred other kids 

of my age and mostly older, 

all standing in a line, 

looking out over a massive hill 

which surely contained 

a million eggs, more or less, 

and possibly three or four of those 

jewel encrusted Faberge sort. 

 

Next to me stood my sister Terrie. 

She an entire year older than I, 

yet being a girl and thus inherently fragile, 

I would dare say keep a 

masculine eye out for her. 

 

Oh, and a second later we’re sprinting. 

We’re scampering. 

We’re bounding. 

We’re leaping. 

We’re zigging. 

We’re zagging. 

We are whole host 

and horde unleashed. 

Yet I    see    nothing. 

Nothing.    Nothing. 

Ahhh… That is, until 

I see nothing   not. 

 

And there it was. 

Right there on 

the ground before me. 

No mere colored egg, 

but a freakin’ gold one. 

Indeed, there at my feet… 

Pure glimmering golden gilt.

No mere minor   bird-butt    egg. 

No, this…    this was my egg. 

A yoke ever meant to be mine. 

 

There on the ground, an embryo of 

   significant religious import. 

Lo but what was that golden embryo 

  if not my soul incarnate? 

That of which forces dark and light 

  would covet as much as I. 

 

And what was this 

manifest moment of 

eggs-istential epiphany 

if not worthy of being shared 

   with my sister? 

And so I yell, “Terrie! 

Terrie! Terrie come here! 

  I’ve found a golden egg!” 

 

Yes, and in less than a second flat, 

there’s a pair of feet 

standing before me. 

And looking up, 

I see not my   beloved sister, 

but rather the face of an older boy. 

He much larger than I. 

 

And he raises both hands 

in what was surely an 

act of benediction at 

my new found grace. 

Then places both palms 

against my chest and 

knocks me off my feet. 

 

And there’s that moment 

when I’m staring up at the sky, 

its clouds and heaven above. 

That moment when I roll over 

onto my knees and turn to find 

that my golden egg is gone. 

 

That moral marrow moment 

when I come to realize 

that that boy was no mere boy 

but that of Beelzebub. 

 

Indeed that this was the day of which 

  Satan stole my soul. 

 

That I as a child was now 

ever brutally aware 

that here in such a sinister 

world such as this, 

there exists  

such a thing 

   as evil. 

 

Ó 2018 Jack David Hubbell

  ...The Gravity of the Situation...

Sometimes gravity is 

not enough, and   

other times,  

far too much.

Somewhere between the two 

we make our weighed decision but 

   in reality it has very little 

   bearing on the outcome.

I suppose it’s that instant when

we’re suspended mid-air that

we’d like to feel we are most alive,

but in truth it’s that moment of impact

when our bodies come in contact

   with the Earth’s surface…

When we fail to pass    

   beneath ground…

When that fulcrum edge 

that defines life or death

makes itself apparent.

 

Tim and I   

did not   want to die.

No, we just wanted to

play teeter-totter with that

guy who holds the scythe

and see if we could make him

hold on to the see-saw board

just as tight as we.

 

Child’s play. The two of us 

feeling that pull of gravity

as we rocketed down a hill 

   on our runner sleds,

seconds away from that moment when

we’d hit a snow-covered hump that

would give us momentary respite from

that unwavering river 

   of mortality.

Yes, and all the while, the two of us 

ever amazed how immortality lasts 

no more than the 

brief span of a second;

indeed, just about 

the time it takes  to utter,

“The Gravity of the Situation.”

 

“The Gravity of the Situation.”

It’s a mantra your heart whispers aloud

with each consecutive beat, all

whilst your acutely conscious self 

remains conveniently deaf.

 

And there after our fiftieth launch

over that death-defying hump,

Tim and I came to the conclusion that

death had gotten bored with us 

and had wandered away 

down to the adjacent ice-covered river.

So of course if our aim was to taunt death,

that was where we were meant to be.

 

And as two young boys edge out onto ice

with their trusty runner sleds,

Death sat there at the bottom of the river,

nestled next to a frigid fish who

tilted his body ever so 

to gaze up at those who 

blotched his light 

if only for a second.

 

Runner sleds on ice.

Where was the gravity in that?

Where was the thrill if there was

nothing to pull you down?

We existed upon a horizontal plain.

This skittery side 

to that frozen other.

Running full-tilt and 

slamming our bodies down upon sleds 

to hurtle cross ice until our 

runners came to halt

upon the river’s distant bank.

And that should have been thrill enough. 

Should have been.  

 

To just what length would you go

to feel the beat of your heart?

For Tim, this would be the end of 

mere side to side navigation, and a 

mighty run at that entire river’s length.  

 

And I imagine Tim sustained a

full five seconds of immortality

before that ice beneath his runners broke.

And there for a moment   Tim   was gone.

There for a full second, Tim

actually got to hear his heart murmur,

“The Gravity of the Situation,” whilst

there in the river’s depths,

dark things shifted    ever so.

 

Yes, well…

There’s a strange thing about rivers.

They tend to rise and fall.

Layers of ice… rise    and fall.

Some three feet down beneath

the ice through which Tim broke,

there was yet    another    layer.

And there Tim heaved back up

   from his absolute death and 

   was reborn of ice.

Though Tim was cold and wet

and scared to death (almost),

you had to admit he was

pretty good at playing that

   teeter…  totter game.

 

Many years later, Tim chose to

   learn how to scuba dive.

Oh and you have to wonder why

anyone would choose to pursue

   such a hobby when

the only bodies of water around

were muddy lakes and rivers.

What would you ever hope to find

at the bottom of such a silt-laden river?

 

And then one day, Tim was asked 

to find something at the bottom of a river.

That same river of which Tim

had once broken through the ice.

 

There in a bend of that river,

a jam of sunken trees had amassed.

A snarl of branches and bark

of which water would roil

and flow through but which

other objects would not.

That which could snag on a

   splintered branch or twig.

A billow of fabric.    

A clot of cloth.

A child’s streaming hair.

Tim was sent to the bottom of that river

in search of someone’s   lost treasure.

 

In his youth, Tim had embraced

   the sport of hand-fishing.

Something his fellow practitioners

   referred to as “Tickling”.

The “tickling” came from 

the act of reaching down into a 

fish’s underwater lair,

letting your hand come in contact

with the lurking creature’s side 

and then slowly caressing its flesh 

until you could safely slip your fingers 

into its exposed gills and 

extract it up to the shore. 

 

And there in that same river

of which Tim tickled for fish, 

he found himself probing 

   tentative hands 

between a gnarled array of cavities, 

while his expulsion of air rose up 

through rotting branches to 

burble away at the surface above. 

He in that murky opaque dark, 

knowing he was at one with that 

same death he had escaped 

   so many years before. 

 

And with each extension of his hand, 

he wondered what it would be

that his fingertips would touch. 

The hem of her skirt? 

The smooth flesh of her ankle? 

The final gesture of an 

outstretched hand? 

 

And there in those tragic depths, 

while cheerless faces awaited him 

there upon river bank, 

Tim reached out 

to tickle the face of 

someone’s 

little girl. 

 

Ó2010 Jack David Hubbell