(number nine)

Click. Armed. Or was it his arm? He isn't sure
but swears he feels the impact. Somehow,
he knows just how it feels to be the hammer,
with just one chance to pound the metal casing
and send a bullet to wherever bullets go.

He lightly sighs and feels the gun become
an extension of his arm: Fire-Arm.
The cold steel texture of what was
once a handle has gone numb,
warmed and smoothed by the flesh
and blood that is pumping through veins
and past the grip before it pours into
the chamber. His heart is swelling steadily,
screaming perseverance (or at least it tries);
but our blood is built to spill before its time.

Ideas are bulletproof, he reminds himself.
A single bullet starts a revolution. Forty-five
revolutions every minute sing a song in
seven inches. If one hundred bullets start
one hundred revolutions, doesn't every
bullet have a tune? He needs to find a harmony.

He counts the bullets in the chamber as
a single bead of sweat falls from where
his hand became the gun, landing on his toe
that he had shot an hour earlier; irony. Only he
could ever salt these wounds. He breathes
in deep, and checks his watch: it's 9:43.

Good time for a revolution.

Feb. '07