I was straddling a motorcycle
a small one
maybe mine, definitely "a"
but atop it I was
no helmet no leather
I had a charm on my keychain
that you wanted to see
must've been an animal
or a cartoon
some manner of mascot
I reached for the ignition and
we fumbled the hand-off
our knuckles brushed
our exchange hiccuped
you closed one eye
and brought the charm up to the other
trying to bore through its secrets
or divine a clue
a slip of my mask
you handed back the keys
like you were giving back
change for a fiver
thumb index and third finger tips
touching, digits curled like a tear
bitting pricking my palm
not that I needed them back
the hog never left its side
cut to: interior
a warehouse at night
immaculately set-designed
a cube of obsidian, hemmed
with autoluminescent glass
and altars to destruction
lousy with arrow,
blade and club
teeming with jumpsuited goons
quaking like a freshly-
kicked anthill
from the shadows emerged a mass
a hulking figure of myth
name forgotten
for the tongue withered to ash
long before ideas or memories
and the henchmen then did know
a true full fear
one that numbs your intestines
curdles the lifeblood
and rather than face
the hand of their under
they would undo themselves
springing into beds of nails
mounted on the wall
plunging their legs into
glass vats of formaldehyde
sledging railroad spikes
through their tibias
compromising the integrity
of their soft chassis
with the ingenuity of an old master
aided by cocktails of corrosives
grinders and gougers and gravity itself
becoming one with sewage
a tone poem of dread and ache
reverberating in a vomitorium of violence
the score of a grieving god
blends into silence like an overtone
the legend standing unmoved
in a freshly emptied room
