an arm for an eye for a tooth

"Ne'er cast a cloot til Mey's oot"





__________________



boquet of daggers,

the crimson cloud swelled neath

his festering wound, seemingly inflicted

by an unseen spider in the course of days spent

in the crannies of where one reaches to pain

T a house, and not having good insurance

this fellow working alongside me

also tells of his herniated condition of his guts

drooping into his nutsack he said as i half listened

to what isn't much fun to hear of

the oregon health plan he has calls it "cosmetic"

though it could be comedic

were it not for being a real human, and now

he won't go to a doctor and the black scab over

a palm sized, smallish mango shaped bump

that days ago was an area of his arm with a

tattoo of a cross

now only the bottom of the tattoo is visible

and he still is laughing it off as he squeezes

out copious pus, to put it plainly, along

with blood of course, and i ask to photograph

it, but who'd want to see this picnic in the park

or try to comprehend

how one lets a piece of our body literally rot

well he did take some antibiotics

that were in some medicine cabinet from years ago

he swills a beer and takes another smoke break

under the hawthorn tree shade

with his axe and a black bird watching him from

the tree he is cursed to destroy

______________


above us, i wearing thick leather gloves

and long pants, and sunglasses for eye protection

are the cumuli heaped up in billowy swelling mounds

of dark blue and eggshell pale ruffles

i could have surmised rain they said they'd heard

long rolling thunder the night before in that brookside

area of town, as the hawthorn had

daily been trimmed back to accommodate ladders

as we cleaned gutters and commenced pain

-Ting our buddy's house, under eaves where

the funnel webs lead a wandering fly into a one

way hello that frodo knows, 

actually three trees we methodically

culled as the faerie king glowered a hundred miles

of rain under his furious brow

with lances on yellowjackets not trained on me

as i painted thirty feet in the air

and they lazily flew about the soffit under my

wet roller full of acrylic color 

not me, not me

the one who the spider chose who the thorn

laced spike tree demanded to avenge

not me, a year to the day of an accident 

which tore my shoulder in invisible winds a kite

crumpled but on fire beneath unruptured

skin, freshly summer tanned and freckled

there on rex, and now life on rex, 

co=incident, planted my heart like a walking stick

grown off a forest gump stump 

with sneakers shredded and the rag tree 

a sprig to the sovereign and the heartwood 

made into ladles for potions

the whitethorn maytree with diving boards for dewdrops

all those three inch swords of thorns

made jesus a cruel joke but also makes funnel clouds

over wine country and descending wrath

feeds Bacchus human blood but in turn dumps

nearly an inch of rain in two hours

in goddamn august, fattening the green hawthorn

berries even as we saw and clip

the triad overhanging the gentleman's fine home

as his daughter crafts an azure grinning wolf suit

at the dinner table out of fake fur

as banshee clouds brim the dead volcano bluffs

of surrounding east portland

____________


"These Siths or Fairies they call Sleagh Maith or the Good People...are said to be of middle nature between Man and Angel, as were Daemons thought to be of old; of intelligent fluidous Spirits, and light changeable bodies (lyke those called Astral) somewhat of the nature of a condensed cloud, and best seen in twilight.


 These bodies be so pliable through the sublety of Spirits that agitate them, that they can make them appear or disappear at pleasure"



________________




does he lose his arm, the fairy army asks

as we guide the trunk to land away from the house

freshly grayed with a brown trim demeanor

as the afflicted mops at his mess wrapped in paper

towels the skin of trees chewed up and 

bleached to exact hue of a drained storm,

with a thud we fell

the god out of season all three grown from one

as the homeowner critiques

my mode of cutting the stump off at the ground

allowing it to endure he claims

as we pull the long deadly branches out past his

vw bus in a heap that a chipper will reduce to

dander, along with the thousand insect queens

and spider battalions buried in crushing 

leafy darkness whether the hawthorn 

planted the lightning or the elemental spark

planted the tree it is neither here

nor there, but it does

weep a sour reminder in goddamn august

perfect painting weather and a treehouse

guarded by oberon on land once tree filled

and needing no human needs nor clootes



8-12-2019


se portland oregon



_____________


"Hymen is the son of Dionysus/Bacchus (god of revelry) and Aphrodite (goddess of love); or, in some traditions, Apollo and one of the Muses



The hawthorn has been regarded as the emblem of hope, and its branches are stated to have been carried by the ancient Greeks in wedding processions, and to have been used by them to deck the altar of Hymenaios. 




The supposition that the tree was the source of Jesus's crown of thorns ....."