David come Goliath in olive grove lament (v202410)

Oh, Pioneers

blessed

directed

destined

.

Slave come master

servant come owner

filthy serf come immaculate tyrant

sharecropper become deed-holder

.

Once-beggars, now commandeer,

direct scorpion traffic

in olive groves sleight-of-hand’d from

prodigal brothers, from

forgotten sisters

shaken at their eviction by impure lovers

.

Shake their round-less rifles,

bolt-actions a-clack,

tongues click, cluck, hoot, walla-walla

stones for the fight back

.

In olive groves usurped,

stand, waver, wobble, oscillate:

duplicate gods decrepit,

engineers of shoddy circumsion of spirits soon withered to thimble-fulls of dust

.

Watch the scarecrow man-god

scar olive trees into valleys of fire

boughs, twigs and trunks

leaves and stumps

into illness alien

into contracts unnatural

into angles unbecoming

into curves of reaches of arcs of hollows

craft suns of their own making

where trees bend, twist, grope

for a god not of their own making

knives and voices shaking

.

Pioneers quake in glory,

shiver in rapture,

count coins, dates, daughters, scorpions, belly-slit open like poppies

daughters too, for the taking

by scarab-faced orphans with

honey-stained hands

.

Oh, Pioneers, weave

fist-knotted roots with dust-jammed bolts

bring waters cancerous and grudging to

prophets known

for poor life-choices

for poorly-timed jokes

.

Their

sand-crazed eyeballs,

sand-glazed spirits,

adoring,

pass

kiss

ankles of

departing gods wearing cardboard boots

.

You,

ankle-biters of an avarice of a god

misdirected

bisected

dissected

trans-sect’d

infested

garroted

mocked

gawked,

shot and leer’d at

.

Your avarice of a god

trails pestilence behind the crush of his split-heeled, wake

scarabs at the mortar, at the pestle come a toxin

for their unarmed unwashed infantry

inhale locusts and beetle-dusts, their nails uncut

they glow w the

stink, the

stench, the

rot-rattle of camel,

horse-flies a-feast on the

rot of turds from the cattle

.

Olive and date

you open’d like infant fingers of fate,

you open’d

clitoris and cunt

spoils for the carbine hunt

.

See,

subscribed you to the

eldest-wish

of your death-wish

god

once fish

now fist

.

Bit you fruit

of the olive tree

grown in your garden of ever misdeed

.

With your new-found fame

young women like poppies

took you, by

clitoris, by

cunt but

never by name

.

Judgement twisted, myopic and bent

like any-every olive tree in your valley a-flame

heaven-sent

.