Bucks Down in the Century

a poem is a window of direct meat. it is an elk that you shot yourself, you are Buck Downs. you are the picture that sent nothing across, until the minute. then you became the elk, fervidly dead. dead is a mark in the plain ocean. dead is a symptom of deadness, direly inveighed against by the smooth barrel. a lurching bullet consumes the desert bullet. the desert bullet crowns achievement, so that much is told. Buck Down is the simple name, raining in a visual oddness of conviction. we all have halls to live in, amongst echoes and clang. when we shoot elk, we desire a blotter and a range. owls filter thru shadow and withdraw thunderbird roister. no news captivates sorely, just resumes the distance of detail. people are trumped by their silliness, their emotional rug, their turbo-charged rust. people include doubt. doubt doesn't own one Buck Downs more than an Allen Bramhall. churches are filled with steeple direction. no one wants a dead elk in the parlour: that would lead to talk. talk is not poetry. a dead elk in the certainty of earth is a fine, fresh instant. we can take care of ourselves. when Buck Downs shoots an elk, there is no tremour of earth and sky, just a postcard suggesting limits. you can eat that postcard, you can chill your whine. when Buck Downs is gutted, and cherubic blood slops onto his poem, another poet, like me, will need to be present, for the satisfaction of an act. acts are basic human need. when those go south, only words remain charged. those words die as elk, so prepare you vocabulary accordingly.