Part of me wants system collapse,
asteroid collision, milk carton
expiry date flicking past fast
enough to blur the stars,
the part of me that as a boy
followed jets with my mind
splitting silver hulls spilling
bodies across the landscape
to prove I wasn’t helpless
as I am to stop the oil
being sucked up and tankered
to where we don’t belong,
but it’s running up the down escalator
and denying the presence of history,
inertia, tunnels driven straight
through mountain sides instead
of going over like a bear
to see what he could see.
Some days I just want to bring it all down,
knowing the glory of nothing
left to destroy,
swim in the lake of I told
you so like an aunt
who knew you’d go bad,
you never wrote thank you notes
for the gift of speech and
abstract thought, the future you
took for granted has ripped your arm
open to the bone and you still
stupid as ham sandwiches plastic
wrapped left in cold case end of day,
that’s you all over like peanut butter
and your hand too weak to
unscrew the jar lid, like how
I suspect we might be getting
what we deserve by being born.

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David Thornbrugh currently writes from South Korea, where he teaches English in a National University. He writes to push back the darkness a little bit at a time, in the same flighty manner as lightning bugs. He has been published in numerous small press journals, and once wrote the questions for a geography textbook. He prefers multiple choice questions to True/False.
E-mail: davidthornbrugh at hotmail dot com  

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summer 2007 | kaleidowhirl
books and chapbooks from authors in this issue