RICHARD GREENFIELD

AVENGER

For once, I rhymed as regular as the January wind. I starved with the pangs of a high hunger, just south of me.

The killing blockades stood tangible or intangible — sometimes they made it through.

Water ran scarce, ousted from others by other regiments.

The glorious flashing blue emitted all rage by remote, where a smart weapon was a first-degree weapon and not an impulse.

In the valley of two rivers I witnessed a siege. Hours into the assault, a battery fired outside the city, stranglehold wrapped around sound and against my duty but I did it

I did it

the battery cry a cry whose backblast anteceded my plan.

The sprawling army surrounded in circles of killing capacity — meanest closest.

I drafted for the morning (great white glaciers melted). The commission freed all killers.

77 or 7 casualties? The 70 wailing bastards split the difference.

The glorious flashing blue emitted all rage by remote. I watched, I curled, chatterer of teeth every night, in the middle of the age, where signals breached the chemical core of the world.

Turned-up television told a story (great white glaciers melted)

The megaphone glossed a tremolo over this troubadour:

I dispelled your tongue and keened away your ears. / I roiled your eyes and scalpeled your hair. / I dismembered every member of yours. / I burned you and I burned your ashes. I decimated / your ashes’ ashes. / I atomized you / and I set you free on a shock wind.