He said, Old Wolves’ Cafe
and I tried to imagine
a coffee shop dimly lit where
Jack London’s relatives
and/or readers might still sit,
gnawing on pieces of bone,
gristled members hardly alone,
Batcave artwork for rent or loan,
heiroglyphics spoken into a microphone,
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology all my own…

Peet’s Coffee or Starbucks with a twist of
irony, elation, and/or cinnamon on Wednesdays…
Pastry of course, pine needles on the floor,
shoulda studied Interior Design,
I’ve still got more…
time on my hands like an artisan with a watch,
my cell phone’s got a clock
AND a calculator too! And my Blue Tooth,
well of course it’s Blue with shades of black,
but radiation’s always suspected, HoneyBees will
eventually tell us what the deal was all about…

©Peter Bray, 10/7/10 All rights reserved…

I help till the soil at Hostile Acres.

Almost everyone carries a gun except me.

Tried to learn once.

Almost shot my big toe off.

Some people came looking for work the other day.

Didn’t take long until the hired hands began talking:

“They’re taking our jobs.”

“How do you know whether or not they’re American?”

“Make them carry IDs.”

“What about injecting digitized guest-worker chips under their skin?”

“Let’s just tattoo a citizenship barcode on their forearms.”

And so on and so forth.

Then a few shots rang out.

This is what I heard a few minutes later:

“It was a lone nutcase with a gun.”

“The nut’s still alive.”

“No, he’s dead for sure.”

“Thank God we can carry guns in public for protection.

The maniac got dropped

and we just let him bleed out.”

“There was a little boy caught in the crossfire.

Don’t know who shot him.

Don’t know how he got hit.”

Next day, we heard the President

on the field radio

saying that, at the very least,

automatic weapons should be banned

from use by the general public.

A chorus of disapproval:

DON’T TAKE OUR GUNS AWAY!!

NO GUNS, NO SAFETY!!!!

WE’LL BE KILLED FOR SURE!!

HE’S NOT OUR PRESIDENT!!

And so on and so forth.

Then I heard a round of gunfire.

The radio was destroyed immediately.

The overseer yelled:

PUT AWAY YOUR GUNS!

And we went back to work

tilling the soil at Hostile Acres–

happy to hear nothing

except the sounds of our own voices

voicing the beliefs

we don’t need education for

because we know how right we are in our guts.

Sincerely,
Terry McCarty

Los Angeles, CA

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