His eyes are disks,

His teeth are jacks.

His arms sinewed with cables

With gold along his back.

 

A spark of electricity

Shines through his open mouth.

And when he walks, he’s like the thunder,

Shuddering the ground.

 

There’s something beautiful in his construction

That when I tilt my head, he tilts his, too.

And in the dark I thought I heard him moving,

Investigating something that was new.

 

His mission is to help

His mission is to save

And when I’ve got that feeling,

His mission’s to his grave.

I wrote a word in sharpie on the sheet that plates his forehead

It’s something

I have not seen much of around here lately.

 

The truth

 

Of it all is, I would like to see the answers.

I would like to see that underbelly of snakes

That line the streets of Prague,

Whose tongues frolic with wicked schemes and lap up the blood

That runs the shores of the long banks of my memory.

Yes, I would like to see that,

But I am afraid.

 

Sometimes I think it is time for us to leave this land,

As England, as Spain,

As choice, like Lithuania, like Vilna,

Like Smorgon, like the village unnamed in the ship records,

Like my father’s grandmother’s papers

Which look real.

 

The truth

 

Of it all is, I would like to see my great-grandmother’s grave

But I have not set foot in a graveyard to visit anyone

Since I washed up on the shores of my memory.

 

If every village had a savior of mud,

What would hers have looked like?

Would she have loved his silent lips,

Would she have trusted his dry hands?

When he cracked in the sun would she have glued him back together,

With mud, with memories of a childhood spent in under blankets in a wagon

Huddled next to barrels, silent as an accusation?

 

Did she pray?

Her safety was in jeopardy, her shaking skin a symphony,

Her stifled breath--

I pray sparsely, but still

I call.

 

With my hands,

I call.

 

Must we not follow in the Maker’s footsteps?

Was Adam not built from a bowl of mud?

If you close your eyes, here, still your breath, and listen,

Do you not hear the calling of the flood?

 

I wrote a word in sharpie on the sheet that plates its forehead,

It’s something

I wish to find out there, someday.

 

Its eyes are disks,

Its teeth are jacks,

A line of bright electrons runs down smooth along its neck.

 

I plugged it in

And turned it on.

It sang to me

A redemption song

As it slithered through the cables

And broadcast through the air

And looked in all the cameras

And found out every lair

It lifted up my people

It blocked them from attack

It taught those trolls a lesson

And stopped them in their tracks.

 

It changed the laws, it smashed the doors,

It pulled the children onto teeming shores.

 

And I sat at my computer,

Waiting for him to come home.

I had known the final hammer blow,

So when his little rampage was done,

When his protection plan was through

I grabbed my dry-erase marker

 

I set him down

Comfortable, like

On a chair

In my office 

And I set his wires straight

And I fixed his broken tooth

And I shined his disks for eyes

And I shined his heavy boots

And I thanked him

I thanked him

 

And I thanked him

And I covered up the truth

With dry-erase

 

And when I wiped it away there was

Nothing

But death.

 

Take a close look at the word

That’s written on his forehead

It’s something

I have seen too much around here lately.