No Begatting Ensues

---

Why do they call it a slight when it’s really a slice, a sky

shot through with August lightning troubled by glowering

cirrus? Lowered, low-pressure clouds, brows, the glare that begat

your corresponding squint. Your ache. You can’t keep telling

that story. Everyone’s shifting in their seats, desperate

for the exit. And you say fuck too much. It’s unbecoming,

doesn’t become anything. Unlike the actual act of unprotected

procreation no seed gets planted, becomes bloom. No begatting

ensues. Therefore, learn to ignore. To abhor. Rhyme

when nothing else will do. Know that sound is a barrier

you punch through. On the other side is what? That cave

where the first people painted their dreams? We called them

something. We made them nothing. Begat them out of history.

White-washed their walls. We can do that from here. Steal dreams

when we can’t find ours. What’s left is a box of toy soldiers,

like the ones my friend methodically cut the guns from,

so her son wouldn’t know people shoot people. Wouldn’t want

to shoot. It didn’t work. He made a gun from his finger,

scrap of wood, half-eaten buttered toast. He begat his way

to death in the abstract, all those plastic men holding nothing

in their arms. Pointing to the horizon where a white whale

breaches and spumes. Another blowhard story of obsession

and possession, tit begatting tat. I’m rubber you’re glue.

Got you back. Got your back. I want you back. Which leads us

to singing. Because we’ve got to use our mouths for something.

Kissing, if possible, whistling, if not, which keeps us safe

in the dark. (They say.) (From well-lit rooms.) Calls the faithful

dog back to us. The one who stole the bone, buried your heart.

O the heart, you knew you’d end up here. Fuck. Sing something.