Steve Kelen

Jack Blizzard

Open the refrigerator & it laughs
Look outside at the white fire
Twirling above an exploding deep freeze
White whirl upward, upward
Down & ever in
Deep chill atoms collide
In ode to the wind
Lizards of snow
Blow along the road
& sidewalks
Twist into rough helixes
That sweep themselves
& let go

Jack Blizzard stands at the edge of town
He breathes in & car batteries die
Slicks the road and exhales harder—
That man headed home
Won't make it this time—
A thin picnic blanket
Locked in the trunk—
Anyway car doors froze—
The snow dance—a burning lung—
White twist—the poor man shouts—
Blood holes up finally in its canyon—
Gleam popsicle & stalagmite
—then the letting go—one breath
Glazes him to the windscreen.

The houses are shaking, a tubercular
Whistle pitches high scream
Drops hard to bang on the window
Like passing thunder.
Old Jack Blizzard's at the door, now,
Chainsaw laughing as he tricks the lock
Blows it open, whirls things like a hay devil
And you have to push so hard to get him out.

Jack cackles down Main Street,
Takes an ice hammer from his belly
Smashes himself to a thousand shards
And where he stood
Poisoned wolf is born,
Bites the ass of a wino
Waking to his heart's chill
And regurgitates bloody snow
Stumble, prey to the wolf
Gone long ago.

Windows roar as the ice seeds
Hatch vapour renditions in the air:
Coyote, jack rabbit, buffalo, and bear
Join the wolf turning out of Main into Elm,
Snow lizards powder the sidewalks
Sweep all before, Jack's fingers
Glide under every door.

Mid-West 1

Bathed in unlucky blood—
Bison land is stamped by a bitumen
Web enmeshing sacred ground,
State shields glint blue in the sun

So the free spirit changes gear
Fuel-injected, turbo charged,
Chants the sky's tyre mantra:
Wrecked-Auto-Heaven
Smile on the State & Interstate
Give us frantic, highway joy
At 90 mph you're sure, rip roar the night away.
Carburetors breathe the eagle's country,
There's no speed limit when oneness is reached
And highways meridian industry and peace.
Engines surge, melt mountain
At dawn the trains whistle like ghosts.

California Angels

                               ~ We'll make great pets ~ Porno for Pyros

The washing machine overflowed
Flooded the laundry and started to drench
The carpet in the basement study. We cleaned up,
Found the pipes were blocked really bad somewhere—
The plunger made no difference.
Jack said we'll take care of this,
Get a snake in tomorrow
& clear that focker out. We'll make a day of it
And finish the bourbon tonight
Maybe all that exercise we got on the plunger
Will have it moving by the morning
And the girls can go shopping in town.
Next day, we drove to the hardware store
And hired the snake—an evil machine
With a thirty foot long steel tentacle
Would pierce whatever was blocking
And the sinks would wash free again.
We fed the snake down
The kitchen sink, slowly
Pushed the thrashing steel
Grinding the throat
House groaned and heaved,
Walls screamed like an oil well
The pipes vomited black gunk
The blockage wouldn't budge.
We drilled every pipe
With the snake, the two of us & the older kids
Had a go, fighting the blockage
Then someone forgot to tighten
The outlet bolt and the tentacle
Whips back fast, pinning finger tips—
Just get it off
That was close hmm fingers work
Reflexes still OK—
You don't mess with this monster.
All day and night feeding
A twister down the plug hole
Making the pipes spew
No luck. It was time
For the chemicals. Copper sulphate
Crystals and a bit of caustic soda
Do the trick, "this is an acid town
Always has been" the old guy in the hardware store
Remarked, handing over a gallon of extra strength
Sulphuric acid. The bottle had the same dour
Warning written in fifty languages
By now we were burning with pleasurable rage
And the war on the blockage entered a terminal stage
—tipped the entire bottle of acid down the kitchen sink
"You shouldna done that," one of the wives read
The label, "only three capfuls at a time."
House shuddered and shuddered again
Floor shook like an earthquake
And the groaning sound was back
Accompanied by bubbling then it all roared up
Out the plug holes, and laughter rattled from the pipes,
That's what woke the kids, now the floor begins to crack.

© by Steve Kelen

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