Kevlar in the Breezeway
It began with an orange,
peeled back
like a pesky hangnail,
it began with egg and sausage and toast
and light reading,
the pages stuck together
like Siamese twins,
an ad for used ball weights
with strange pirate hooks on the end,
and the preacher on the television
said to send money,
that things were dire,
seems the devil was hiding out
in iceboxes again,
tampering with mail
enticing pecker hungry virgins to defile themselves
with chrome showerheads,
and when I went to the window
there were many men,
many men in masks
when it wasn’t even Halloween,
crouched behind dumpsters
ducking in the tree line
guns levelled like tiny battleships
over the steady green electric box hum
providing cover, as they say,
protection for the others,
and the circling buzzards seemed to know
amongst the footsteps and potted plants,
much kevlar in the breezeway
and I turned the television down
and the preacher went away:
back to Macon, GA
back to empty pews
and intravenous drugs,
and I grabbed something blunt from under the mattress
and waited for a knock,
a knock that never came
but for all the racket
a few doors
down.