...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

   ...Salvation...

The expression 

goes something like, 

“It makes my skin crawl 

just to think about it.” 

And yea, so I try to visualize 

   just this “it”. 

You know… 

Skin crawling. 

Not my own.   No. 

Someone   else’s   flesh.

And this said psoriatic skin 

could be an entire foot, 

   heel to toe, to toe 

   attached toe total. 

Could be a segment of 

forehead, forearm or    foreskin. 

Perhaps one complete bulge o’ buttock. 

And the set premise and comprehension 

of one lone individual standing there 

with only that skin of one cheek crawling… 

well, that itself makes myskin crawl. 

To suffer the slingshot and 

projectile vomit oration of 

another’s outrageous misfortune. 

To titillate torment by 

taunt of tarantula touch.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat 

and yet, no matter the ample selections, 

not a single variation 

will pass the cat’s approval. 

I myself have grown rather attached 

to this issue of epidermis 

and contrary to my past notoriety, 

there remains a defined limit as to 

just how far I will denude myself. 

That my inner visceral being 

contain its intestinal self by way 

of a goo retaining sheath 

is really for the best of all 

   visually concerned. 

That the most beautiful woman 

this world has ever known 

is somehow deemed the lesser  

because her skin has been removed 

seems nothing more than 

   base misogyny. 

And here, pending the weight 

of one’s carnal coital decorum, 

the skin at the edge of one’s mouth 

will crawl up, 

or adverse sag down. 

Sad sad frown. Woe,

a grimace of grievous demeanor. 

And here I feel compelled 

to express the somber fact 

that my mother     was dying. 

She with total renal relapse. 

She of chronic kidney collapse. 

And she? 

She would choose to deny dialysis and 

the discomfort of its fluid redemption. 

Oh, her soul, yes. 

Her soul of course. 

But not that of her flesh. 

No maintenance of her mind. 

These she would decline. 

Her soul defined sublime, 

whilst her thought 

confined to rot. 

She in degrees of degradation. 

Her soma now gone sump. 

There in some previous moment 

    of cognitive clarity, 

this woman in whole my mother, 

had of sound mind decided 

she would not submit to the pain 

which is the process of kidney dialysis. 

And there with that decision… 

Her submission… 

Her admission to the end, 

she within this self-ordained 

sentence of psychosis,

relents to this tsunami of sewer sepsis 

which becomes the 

harrowed her in whole. 

And though the rising tide of toxins 

manifest as insatiable itch, 

it is the toxic terminal taint 

within her cesspooled cerebellum 

which soon festers as dank delirium. 

And she there begins to hallucinate. 

And those visions born of psychosis 

come to coalesce around 

her most intense sensation: 

the crawling of her skin. 

And there in her eyes, 

what does she behold but 

a vision of both spiders and centipedes 

scurrying to and fro, and up and down 

the length of her arms and legs. 

There in her fetid meld of mind, 

abides a horror of which I as loving son 

am powerless to combat. 

Salvation.

She within an entire lifetime 

of Catholic devotion, 

yet she must wait until 

the pending moment of death 

to receive her extreme unction. 

And I… 

I want this loving god 

of which she so adored 

to grant her salvation now, 

yet what is she but biologic? 

What is she but 

defective flesh and blood? 

And the hospice nurse tells me 

that for the failure of my mother’s kidneys 

there is no known drug of which 

might bring her blessed redemption. 

No psychotropic of any sort 

which might convert this crawl 

of spider and centipede unto 

an anointment of winged cherub 

and the flutter of angelic seraphim. 

Lo but said god so long revered 

bequeaths upon her sentient skin 

a plague of pestilence. 

Indeed here upon arrival 

at life’s lingering denouement, 

he bestows a infestation 

of skittering insect hell.

A divinely anointed hell from which 

its rancid release at moment of death, 

I would therein define as heaven. 

And that this is the way 

a blessed life is 

divinely decreed to end,  

in turn makes my skin crawl.

Ó2019 Jack David Hubbell 

  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