buffalo gods

(i) kobold

once,
a child
fair & whiteskinned
& plump,
shed of his clothes,
his eyes uncovered
dragged in his fifth
year from the
black tent of
his birth--

a sword of bronze
is run through his
midsection;
a second of steel
downward through his
left shoulder,
leaking through
his stomach--

in his eyes
only pain--

the pain of being
worshipped as a dried
carcass stretched
over elk bones

& later
a pile of gray dust,
bones long since
Destructured

his scream was gathered
by the shrubs and trees,
the bone orchard
sends a clattering sigh
over the spreading blackness
around his knees

his scream echoes in his
box of ash wood--
revered for 14 generations--

the boy is bound as
a wailing spirit
a child forced into godhood
his tears a pile
of crackling obsidian
thrown in the bone-fire--

midnight or just before
the field swallows
his blood,
the sky is blinded
and the moon
is dying--

they bring him their flesh,
their goats
and their children
--rapes and wars, deaths
in his name--

animal blood for
his temperament--

his weeping face
in the trees--

the [kobold] rides in
the head/in the heart/of
some huddled newcomer
to the
buffalo's land--

(ii) ivory dice

cut from tusks
or antlers
or from horn,
whittled seeing stones
& thunderbird feathers
dipped in
ruby tears--

there are strangers
in long dark robes
stomping in the roaring
halls just
outside Fresno--

the eastern roads are haunted,
the darkness is scattered
across a blank tombstone--

the grave is a shadow of the hole,
& under the
ground an eyeless spider
awaits his
sacrifice--

cubes thrown,
the boneless spirits guiding
my scaly hand,
my shot lung is sqeaking
something squirms
down there,
feeding on the deadly
sweet stench--

Lord i don't mind
the hanging,
it's the waiting,
I mind, Lord,
it's being dead so long.
and you wait in jail so long
it's the waiting
that I mind--

them dice
ain't got no dots,
every number is
Nothing--
every answer is
just laughter,
like the polluted
breeze,
empty and gone,
heavy & sinking
in--

laughing,
fades off
wrapped unseen in
a bourbon foam,
floating back
from ten years ago--

(iii) Whiskey Jack

--My name is Wiskedejak,
my name is Aura,
is "Now is Forever"--

My name is the land,
the buffalo's sigh is
the dying wind, sent up
from the earth within the earth,
the musty, wet sound of the fire's voice
is where i was born, where i
want to die--

the last chuckle of the
Hanged Man, them gallows jokes,
thats my temple--

the orchid-wine on Papa
Legba's breath,
his wild, magnificent, murderous
eyes--these are what I carry,
what I know you wait for--

I am the ghost at every
remembered battle--I am the
Uncle of the Poet, the grandfather
Mechanik, the stranger you've
been waiting on,
somehow always missing me
by a hair of a second,
i'm always down the road
before you're done pissing in
the wind--

after every drink, every stolen look,
every dreamless dawn
you wake alone--after every heartbreak
every loss, every fight, every bloody
night crawling in the rain--

i'm always watching from the shadows,
always there to lift your arms
and see you to the cot--

i stop them all from
pouring blood on the roses,
from killing the children's dog--

i was born of laughter,
and i am now made
of tears--

(iiii) stealin'

I'm gone, boys,
i stole Evenin's jawbone
hung it from the church doors
& caught a bus into
the Badlands. there's light
out there, & water--but the
water comes up from
dead lakes & ponds folks forgot
to believe in or visit or
swim in--you got to find
the hungry old ghosts,
take em into yr eyes
hold em there,
then chomp down on they necks
and let em buck you around some--
they're fierce, and
it hurts, & the sun'll
spin up there like some
flamin coin--it's grinnin,
it's tellin you nothing, tho
don't listen, don't talk or
blink and don't even breathe--
just hold onto
the ghosts,
& they'll let you
live again.

(v) calling on Ganesh

-Elephant-head! old man
of the road,
forgotten halfbrother of St.
Christopher,
tell us how to ride
the mice, how to tame
the thunderbirds--

learning is a way
to die lonely, & death is
just a way back in--is this
true? or am i asking
the wrong god? you are the
elephant's memory, swing yr
trunk and clear the
road, shatter the left
hand threads and rust
the bridges for me--

-Ganesh I've never
been to Germany
but were I to trudge some
long-sung
unpainted sidewalk,
watch the weeds
& flowers with their
untouchable secret names
forcing their wisdom
back up through
the layer of old rock
and asphalt--they own
the world, don't
they?
Do you?

-Does anyone? I'm a god,
not a savior, not a peddler,
but my brother is groaning,
his face is shrieking.
someone left his medal on
the Vacaville train tracks--

he's about to be flattened!

if you go now
to save him,
I'll see you through.

(vi) what the banshee's brother said

"I was sweating thru seafood,
with thirty different lakeholes
burning in sawdust--

i was bent over,
learning to count in Greek
when it hit me:
i was walking on thin air
and nobody noticed!"

(vii) hell in a bottle

-and the bottle is brown--
once is enough,
twice is a death sentence,
Georgia owns the salt mines,
her daddy's drunk and one-eyed,
balling the maid's little sister,
the 12yearold with the lazy eye--his
window is broken
& the bricks were laid over
his brother's grave--
a dead twin uncle for Georgia,
who's already buried her fiancee,

an infant savior
still gnaws on her poppa's
conscience--might've been
his appetite,
mindless
but not innocent--
drained his little brother
until a silent martyr
burst from the same womb
2 seconds later--

--someone owns poor Georgia's tears
& someone else wants them
& if seven cents
and a case of wine
[RAVENSWOOD/MERLOT/SONOMA VALLEY/1999]
ain't enough--

maybe a drowning child
will take it--take
it fast, steal that
bottle--

there's only hell at the bottom,
stained orange
& the light is already fading
as the old man
runs alongside
the hunted,
stalked by
his blackened grandson's
eyes--

(viii) i ain't superstitious

--I don't believe in no gods
at all--i'm only a boy,
only a man, symbolic &
only as dead
as i am
alive--

i don't believe in luck
i don't believe in chance
i can't see no heave in
a Jack o' Hearts palm,
unlined and ghastly pale--
there's no hell, neither,
Œxcept in people's heads
& pain
is pain

no one told me
what to watch out for,
and no one hears
my stories,
no one dried my old tears
and nothing ever
works out like i wanted--
i'm so old, and i'm still
so young--

i don't walk after midnight,
not after what happened to
old Automatic Jake,
out past the graveyard
there's a gorge
leading to old dancing
ground and firepits,
where he'd root
'round for arrowheads
and spearheads
but only found
a pair of flaming eyes
and teeth like some
rabid badger--
he had no face
when his sister
Georgia found him,
and someone took his hands--

now i ain't superstitious,
but i stay in when
the fog comes in after
the sun goes down
and i don't wear my boots on
concrete,
and i hope i never whistle
past a unmarked grave or i'll end up
in one--

i ain't superstitious none,
no way, not at all,
but i just saw
the sun
set at four
in the
morning--



(ix) talking to the shadow god

& dealing gin
with cards of silky,
flimsy bone,
the air smells like
an antler stew--

it's pouring outside
raining like
Independence Day--

& tomorrow's a stillborn
zombie,
but the night will last
a decade,
so he has his
pixies working
their still
in the other room--

-Shadow says something,
wise and terrible--

like the truth,
forever leaking from
a statue's eyes-- i can't
even remember what
he said,
it's already gone,
snatched up by the air,
things go unseen
and whir past my head--

it's nerves is all,
and Shadow's saying

"Remember Brokedown
Sweeney? old Mad Sweeney with
his apeneck and leather bandolier?
the god of underground stashes, man,
and he gave me the sun
one time in a bar after
he whupped my ass--i worked for
this guy then, old guy with
more tricks than Coyote--almost--
but i gave the sun
away, and nothing has
worked quite as well since--
he was a mad irishman,
the 300 pound leprechaun,
he knew Howlin' Wolf,
was there watchin'
Robert Johnson shake like a
fever'd dog on that splintering
floor in a Tennessee cabin,
after poor Bob drank that
poisoned whiskey--
Sweeney was the shape
in the darkness,
he held the light
but died so quick after
i lost it--
we're gonna
forget so many
things tonight
we need to remember
him..."

there are lies
scattered around my boots,
but i let em be--
i think i remembered
the mad irishman
but it could have
been just
some sugar-burnt smear
of crystal,
thumbed onto the sky
by the Bird-woman's ghost,
her sad yawping overlayed
with her wise, doomed, eyes--

she's the dreaming goddess,
holding them
for the rest of us--

what could i say?
i opened my mouth
and i told him:

"you'll never be subtle,
Shadow,
but you're easy to
ignore"

-he looked up,
and called, eyeing me,
saying,

"I hate being seen, man.
eye have too much heat, too
much to absorb,
always more
than i want
to know."

he laid his cards
down.

"Gin."

(x) Papa Legba
[weasels in the corn]

-come on, now, boy
come into my kitchen.
's raining something awful
out, hmm?
Devil come to call
and grab you shoulderblades,
goan shed 'is eyes for you,
stand there skinless
and let you wonder
who you dreamed of--was you
right to run? wrong to
come 'round here?
don't be 'shamed of no moanin,
naw, now, it's good to
be afraid--
ain't no god out here,
though, boy, ain't no devil
ain't naught but
trees in the sunset,
like black bones,
maybe, or maybe roots
reaching up from
the ground, they plants
the dead down there
so often in the summer--
you won't see no more colors
leak from the sky,
not for a long time
and ain't no screams you
followed here,
that was just my sigh,
my hair on they ends,
watched you making yer way
out to see me--
don't worry none.
just a sting,
is all--
maybe a little more.
just a little spark
sputter out and flow
down yr legs--

i come riding on 13 virgins,
and you can hang yr hide
on that ash branch--
[see how lowslung,
see how pretty it glows
in the dirty moonlight?
they used to hang folks on
them trees, them trees alone
in the old days--they gone,
sho', gone like all the old gods,
but somewhere they take
the black skin off the baby,
and feed em to the weasels,
hang the child by its
heels, a feast for the wolves--
that's how you make the
corn grow]
you come back
to me,
skinned and pink,
take up yr skins
again, shake em off
again, again and again,
mebbe when you eyes
finally uncovered you
can look back on me,
won't have to beg again
for my hand on your
head, my silk tophat
bobbing above you,
my eyes like insane
specks of silver and bone
shrieking in the starlight--

i take nothing
& i give what you need--
a little legend for your soul
a little fame for your breath--

and if i need to
i'll jump into your bones,
sink my claws into your mind,
i'll walk you whistling past
the graveyard,
we'll find some brothers
out in the corn,
mad and gibbering,
offering their arms
to the weasels--
we'll eat their old fur
together,
watch the eagle eggs crack gently,
birth music for the blood moon
and we'll eat the baby
birds as
the shell come 'part--

i'll be waiting
just as long
as you at
them crossroads
when the sun
goes on down--


© Malachus Monk