grand avenue

shattered

shattered like my brother's thumb

when a crap mouthed little immigrant boy

brought a bat down on the tip

split the skin and the tissue swelled out

swelled out like a big human tissue balloon

and the blood and the broken finger nail

reminded joey the pig-nosed kid from down the alley

reminded him, he said, of when the man at the sausage shop

put the meat scraps with little bits of bone or hoof

into the sausage grinder

that's what it reminded him of,

yep

sausage as fresh as sausage can be

pink and perfect,

phallic and full of blood and bone and my brother's thumb

and it was shattered when I saw the last person in the world

the last person in the world

the last person ever to draw breath

drawing breath as he stood erect and stretched that skinny frame

and the apparently other last person in the world

put several .38 wadcutters through his thorax

thorax always sounded like the name of a detergent

except his bled and wept that life-blood

and little bits of shattered bone – i believe it was rib

and it looked a little like my brother's thumb

when the great balloon of bloody tissue and bone fragments

made their way to the light of day

and that thing called a thorax

kind of deflated like a, well, yes

like a balloon

yep

that's what it did

and then finally i walked around that mall

or whatever it was

and i was tripped out on pills or booze

or maybe just tripped out on fear

yep

that is what it was

tripped out and wandered around

and walked and walked and walked

no great balloon of human tissue 

or wadcutter penetrated thorax

like detergent or not like detergent

asian lady with the eggroll sing me the blues)

stick it in hard

stick it in hard and hot

stick that eggroll in my greedy gluttony mouth

as a tissue balloon swells with each breath

and the hole in that thorax weeps blood and bone and sweat

weeping but never crying

as the tissue balloon

reminded joey the pig-nosed kid from down the alley

reminded him, he said, of so many things

yep

that's what it does

and so I walk past the asian lady with the eggroll

singing the blues

and I find that fat pasty pale german man with the beer stein

selling crack and wurst and worse to little kids and widows

hiding the crack in his anus and a little bit in his eyelid

just for good measure

he lifts the stein to show me a watercolor of his anus

painted on the bottom

the bottom of the stein, of course)

and he winks at me and a little bit of crack 

falls out of his eyelid

falls onto the counter where i pick it up

and use it to buy some

sausage as fresh as sausage can be

pink and perfect,

phallic and full of blood and bone and my brother's thumb