Train

I'd like to go out like Achilles
in a blizzard of hurled arrows,
instead of old age peaceful,
like grapes into raisins,
like plums into figs,
like flesh into dust.

I invite violence to me,
veni veni Mephistopheles,
fallen Faustus, and gluttony,
like a gammon of backbacon,
with open embrace. All sibling sins follow
tumbling over one another
jostling for position
and vying for my attentions.

Envy tastes of sliced black olives
left on the counter overnight. Pride
I keep in silver bowls near the bay
window. Sloth of down tick slides
halfway
off the bed. Greed always smiles.

And lust is always with a small "l".
lust has ferret feet, lust has tangle vines.
lust is water so blue, so pretty to look at
but so cold when swimming.

Above all these: father
ANGER admonishing his fists with a raucous laugh or
as a train bulleting
then ricocheting off bricks, and this waking nightmare
of wrath. The velocity of him rockets me forward
seething
in a blur of blood-tinged
lunacy.

Achilles boards at Vermillion.