Red Touches Black

Thirty yards from here and now 

   there lies death, and yes,  

this pending fatal misfortune 

is measured in lethal distance. 

   That is… 

Should you choose to 

   move towards it. 

 

Then again, 

you could likely select any   

point on a given compass, 

stride in that direction and 

there ultimately encounter 

some kismet of grim mortality. 

 

Your chosen game of chance,  

otherwise known as the Mojave Desert, 

comes complete with applied compass.  

Its horizon an outer rim of roulette 

here arrayed in alternating red and black. 

Upon such land of sinister spun destiny, 

your chance to land upon 

   ventured misfortune. 

Red touches black, a friend of Jack; 

Red touches yellow, kills a fellow. 

 

“Look.

   Just there. 

       A Coral Snake.”

 

That which does not make you stronger. 

Rather, that which simply kills you. 

Death as dire delectation. 

Yon hither a slither looms 

and foredooms a venomous bloom. 

 

She had told me of how 

she possessed a phobia of snakes. 

Yes, but who of a fearless mind 

finds another’s blind fright 

naught but ill illogical? 

 

Just there in your garden 

a common Garter Snake 

slips tongue forth to and fro, 

and presently this night’s 

   nocturnal symphony 

is one cricket lesser. 

Oh, and with such loss comes 

a mute to this midnight’s roar. 

Lo but between a rising 

   clamor of crickets 

and the death of a single snake, 

she would prefer dread din 

   of dark dissonance. 

 

Here now, we two, soul oblivious, 

traipsing down a desert track, 

a maunder meander Mojave

both in search of a certain death, 

and it then that I utter 

those fateful words, 

“Look.

   Just there. 

       A Coral Snake.”

 

Oh, and here at such  

shared lethal moment, 

death there now transits 

the span of a tire-to-tire track. 

Indeed, a patent poisonous presence, 

yet my having so stated 

is here dismissed as ludicrous lie. 

 

“Here,” I say. 

“Place your head at my shoulder 

   and I will point to it.” 

“Where?” 

     “There.   Just 

there at the tip of my finger.” 

 

And if it is possible to reach out

and touch death personified, 

   I   just   did. 

And that snake just there 

at the end of my hand 

slithers up my arm 

to be present there 

at my shoulder as well. 

 

Death.    Yes, 

death has a sound. 

That which sounds 

like a woman screaming. 

A deafening screech  

which erupts at my ear, 

and though its express intensity 

does not there subside, 

its volume soon abates as she 

frantically scampers away up the track, 

there only coming to stop 

some fifty yards distant. 

She a full furlong gone, yet that 

scream and spastic thrash of limbs 

   continues in full effect. 

 

Eventually her shriek relents 

and with it that presence of death. 

Oh, not at the time mind you. 

It would take decades for 

such mortal horror to there 

leglessly slither away—

years for me to discover that 

the vast Mojave Desert has not a single 

red-touch-black    Coral Snake. 

 

Oh, King Snake yes. 

King Snakes in abundance. 

That which might eat a Coral Snake 

if given half a chance—yes. 

   Yes, there is that. 

 

If what horrifies you 

eats that what horrifies you, 

does that not negate 

the original horror? 

The enemy of my enemy is my… 

fuck that shit!     She 

does   not   care. 

 

That some disgruntled Coral Snake 

might possibly inject a deadly neurotoxin 

versus a King Snake’s comparable feat 

of swallowing the length of your largest toe, 

registers naught but of mutual malice. 

That which God hath created 

   absent arms, legs or fins 

   must die, die, die.

What matter the existence of 

lesser Coral or King Snake 

when Satan hath spawned 

far worse deviltry such as that 

of the common Garter Snake?

 

There, just now… 

There in her own back garden… 

There beneath some random rock 

roils a riot of pre-orgasmic snakes. 

And though eyes be clinched tight, 

there within her phobic mind 

she’s just 

toggled agog 

a herpetologic 

boggle orgy ogle.

 

There something without legs 

   doth slither, 

whilst that given legs 

   once again 

          begins to scream. 

 

Ó 2022 Jack David Hubbell