Front Toward Enemy
for the approximate love of something
These clothes don’t fit us right / I’m to blame / It’s all the same
– R.E.M., “Country Feedback”
I I live in a land of magical thinking. Where the body is one body – mycelia, pond scum, certain roots. Affixers of nitrogen and cold spring/winter suffixes. My feelings stand before me excommunicated like a sense-impression. In my little bag of wonders I keep an armature that describes the perfect plastic soldier that I can’t wait to show you. See, his arms will be detachable. We can replace them with bigger ones – like this – with just a little twist and pop. He can be dynamically posed with all five tools. He comes with a drawstring on his back that summons war stories when pulled. He will teach you artisan slurs – all the ones men trade like precious rocks in the backs of alleys or the family cigars while sitting on stained porches to watch tornadoes come. He is eager for his next marine deployment. We are currently working on hoverjets that will keep his boots off the ground. Because war has gathered from all over the world. It seeks to play ball with spheres of influence. It makes contact in order to get on base. Apparently my team is sworn to isolationist policy. We have walled our garden from God himself and planted foul seeds in His name. It shambles in the corpus. It is canted in the weave: doctrinal mass, painted bodies. A drunken fistfight in the parking lot. If it takes evil to recognize you, reader, I recognize you. You are squarely in the frame. I have set the level of zoom and focus in the lens. Put your hands up. Now hold still. Freeze. I mean it.
II Many thousands of boys play catch in simpatico at this very moment. They are learning more about each other. They are developing loyalties that years from now will lead them to a very dark place: one where our front is aimed toward the enemy and then reverses when the empire comes home. An embarrassment of evil in the wings flies low overhead by ancient rite of spring. God bless these united states whose moral capacity resembles that of an unwilling walnut. To do this I place in rooms what will not grow in abundance outside. The heart leaves a trail of clues that lead to an agent of regulatory capture. A pact between contact points that sparks the great animal to life and yokes it to the wagon. In the midst of all this water some buffalo still wander. They are confused. They believed themselves part of manifest destiny but in truth became destiny made manifest. A made man prowls the streets as if murder can earn it – the "it" in this case holding limitless authority to switch the skins of mores and moray eels. A true hunter of the sea, the made man at bat sinks ships and swallows whole islands as a matter of diminished American tradition. To skin a whale you make a huge cut, peel, and then roll. I’m pointing at the hillsides in panic. Live fire is behind us. A mine is planted around every corner. The sun sets in the west at the bottom of the eighth. At this point mercy is precluded but did you know? You can measure time with a spoon. And in this life (the room) a passion play arises that will not show a front toward the enemy. It will turn your cheek with righteous fury and freeze you yet again for strike three. This rock is responsible for all it cannot do and when I squeeze it I wonder at the water that was waiting to get out. My spit puts the gum in argentum. My fingernails foreclose possibilities. My teeth are on fire.
III Join me: powerwash the deck with close-toed shoes. Brush off dust in the space between innings. What is the question of flesh even doing when the answer is seven hundred steel balls? Something independent of our physics, discordant, unimpeded by explosive shredding. In exile there is no misfire, only gay little Air Force cadets. Almost enlisting being somehow less embarrassing than actually doing the deed. When tachyons rumble through you and pin your spirit to earth with infant form please remember the herd also thunders in your hidden desires for the approximate love of something. How you’d love to launch a missile for school children to behold. Cal, I watched you cry like a baby when the Canadians beat your ass in October. Don't regress more than you already have. To the enemies of my humanity who announce themselves from the fronts of their shirts I say this: I hope you swing with all the might of our American military. Swing your very heart out. I am resigned to cheer for a villain or show love to a loser but not both.