Lesson Plan for Small Child

To kill slowly with the hand
alone,
first locate
an area that is significant,
such as for breathing.
The nose will do.

Smash upwards
with the heel of the hand.
If done correctly, blood will
thickly flow.

The mouth is hardly worth your time.
Unless you think you can
break teeth.

The throat is better.

Jab with the fingers,
making them a knife.
More than once.
Collapse an Adam's Apple.

Don't consider ribs beneath you.
They don't break easy, but bruise
a treat, and make every breath
a labor.
And the sternum is the seat
of a lot of nerve--
and just at the nib
of the sternum
is the xiphoid process.

A heart punch can be
most artfully done
with a two-knuckled punch
up and aimed in. Causing
extraordinary damage.

I only taught the nephews
how to unlock a wrist hold,
to unhinge a thumb and
make fingers splay
to drop a knife,
the knowledge to do more
quivering in my head.

But they listened as I
splayed their fingers with
my thumb because
I spoke with the knowledge
of other things--

Which one either ought to know,
or needn't and I
can't say which.

They are useful,
and for my part,
I learned them young.

But it Was Her First

Her skin split,
her eyes wide,
the dreams of possessing
what she lately denied
defied in the moment
of the irrevocable
slide of her body to the ground
where he wanted her
six feet or twelve feet under.

More, he wanted her hurting
longer, but she stopped
short and breathed
her last, accusation on her face
like it always was,
and he wanted that look gone because
that was the look he wanted gone
when he did it.

And her family was next.

His life was spent,
sped out of control,
flung far and fucked-up on a
drum roll to the crash
of his life and he wondered if he could
meet with a knife tonight,

or no, a cop's gun,
or maybe he'd end it himself,
having seen what he wanted, her body
down

still at last and no
more his than it ever was
but she was the first and
easy.

Not the worst moment
to hang a last thought on,
he thought at the last--
a hatred to death.

Like the Dust

The motes glow in
the still humid air
alit with sunlight
like planets falling
in a trajectory to the bed
so near the window
with the sun streaming in,
that I sit here and watch
glowing bodies of light--
only dust,
and they seem as radiant as angels.

And I know I am made of
the things made in stars.
And only one star
serves the planet I live on.

But I see even the stars in the least bit
of dust.

I am Dust! Star Dust!
And the stars spun out of the
beginning with a Bang--and I
am dust and banging along.

And maybe I project a little light?

Shouldn't I?