In a hot attic with black garbage bags
taped over the windows and
model hot wheels booming power cosmic
are fantasies about kung fu practitioners
on the path to the distant volcano.
In fact,
Sifu of the Iron Wire Set covers his heart
like a unbarring bridge
and has a striking resemblance
to Norman Mailer
with murder in his eyes.
Inseparable with the overbearing sense of superiority
that comes with being a sensei of dark rooms
and brass, of plastic and fringe panic,
the path to the volcano only represents
a modicum of hope. We’re talking a man of
many dualities here, and just as much as he wants to
believe that at the peak, although burned from
time to time, he’s set on something
holy or at least with grand purpose, that his stances
unbreakable as they are, are found on solid ground, eventually
he has to acknowledge the fact that
there are no bridges, no lateral projections that will bring him closer to a high or even middle ground.
The indigent fantasy is held together
with illusions just as thin as the garbage bags
keeping out the heat. The cars on the windowsill
that will never start, or even roll between his
fingers again. In the end, he’s just left with practice.
Frankie Metro is the co-founder of Kleft Jaw Press, an online/print publication dedicated to the incorporation of transcendental realism in contemporary art/literature. He is the author of most recently A.P.C. (KJP 2014) as well as The Anarchist's Black Book of Poetry (Crisis Chronicles Press 2012). You can find his work in numerous online/print publications.