Machine Gun Moments

He said over a few beers:

‘My name is Malakai Vacey

I have never been myself

for more than four minutes.’

‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘he feared

his self out of Easter dress

Out of relationships with dying women

Out of books and the boots of

Bukowski’s Eliot’s Ellison’s

Characters. Out of the faces

and skins of those who died

and left their drabby suits

under the Christmas trees

Out of the living moments

Out of the slow rides in

autos full of white niggers

chinks fags and spicks

across the states and frontiers

and hills that whistle right up under the clouds.’

‘Out of innocence too much like a cherry

Out of a pruned boy only at 22,’

when he did say he could be his self,

‘A dick, with a liver full of spit—

ungrateful pair of eyes hyper juiced

on dull spirits and soiled lungs,

sucking pollen from the lips of angels.’

‘A lip, plugged with black tobacco slugs—

a smile that makes heroes kneel in

cracked dirt and cry;

an ugly dick, so full of distorted love

the only way to live is to burn and fight.’