I am not a man; I am dynamite

Sometimes you are the single source,

the fist with all the flowers. Sometimes

you are the golden bass, a whisper-

revolution in this country of dust

stretching across the pond’s dirty

bowl. Like a razor through silk

bedclothes, your fin breaks through

the tunnel of sky and one vain cloud.

Sometimes the hostage next door, you

are Sunday every day, and at night

a teenager in Auburn, Nebraska,

slamming an aluminum bat

to a goalpost until your head can’t take it

to make something fucking happen.

Sometimes you are the single source,

the fist with all the flowers, a walking

iris, whose promise to die by late

afternoon makes you the word,

too much to bear. A syllable is

a latch, this word a door you shouldn’t

have opened on a room, its very air

unstable with history. In the wrong

hands and right conditions such

a word will detonate, the way Ambrosia

hides murder in its chest; to find

the brute, look for grieving; how

many souls packed themselves in

until Bethlehem beat them into bedlam?

You are the single source, the fist

with all the flowers—the bass, the razor,

the hostage, the boy, the bat, the ignition,

and yet we sleep on in this field of arms

where I am yours and you are mine.