The Rape of Pheasants
 

Dreams are a fickle thing

Aren’t they? 30 seconds to a minute

Of those yellowed cue balls 

Sloshing around the deep-red liquid of the skull

Is all it takes. 2 moons in flux,

The cascading collision 

Of the crimson crashing crests 

Create constant croaks of the conscience. 

The geniality of close-lidded genesis

While you drool onto your pillow.

 

At my latest conception 

I was at home.

I had just gotten home from Iowa, or Ohio..

Which one was it again?

With how beaten down the boards of that “house” were

I’d never be able to recall it.

Anyway, it was on the television.

Not just a passing glimpse,

No, the carcass and all of it’s innards were shown.

Giant tan swirled lollipops of peeled wallpaper 

Littered the claw-scarred hardwood floor. 

The marks were so feverishly fervent 

That the sight alone secreted sounds of skittering.

 

Face smushed against an ominous broadcast 

Every excerpt enthralled my ever-growing interest

Each exposure of beam an insect-ingested bone enclosed within itchy muscle fiber

And cracked rubber nerves, it was an exposé

In the belly of a dying beast.

It’s creaking hunger rung out with every step in it’s hallowed halls;

It’s carbon monoxide chirp gave me chills 

As it set out to strangle the settlers that sullied it’s inner sanctum.

 

Pawpads pressed razor-sharp nails to the door,

The snap and snarl of greyhound pack dogs.

The daughter Cain letting them in,

Rifle cracked over the shoulder of the hunter.

I was panting like the very dogs I saw 

Sweat and slobber making the screen slick

As she picked up a hare, slicing off it’s head 

And fastening it to a chain encircling her neck.

Tossing the meat to the mangy mutts.

 

The bones clattered in the wind;

Macabre crafts, wind chimes strung up with sinew.

Lyres, lyres, all of them 

Tied taut with ligaments

Her twin brother Abel sewing up the scraps

And belting out trembling, titillating tunes,

Trickling tears down from his milk-clouded eyes.

Opaque orbs, the boy was blind, 

Blinded by his mother, held down and forced 

To stare into the sun, her only son,

Her only reminder of his father, one of the many 

Reminders of her ruin. Each day Abel sings

 she considers cutting the swan song short.

 

My stress was skyrocketing, I was staining the television set.

My crown cracked and dribbled stinging hot drops of sweat

At the sorrowful sight of the family.

 

Poor feeble Abel, 

More vestigial limb than fraternal twin,

The lil sunspot snuffed out before the supernova

How does the blood smell on your skin?

 

Wild blooded Cain,

No sacred stags for you to stand with, 

Does it feel good down there in the dirt nipping at heels?

Animals only get remembered by the marks they cause.

 

Then there’s Mother Leto

A titan booted from paradise,

Who carried her twins on swollen purple feet

Running from that damned snake, she found an island,

Twice the children, twice the length of labor, 

The matriarch found herself marooned.

 

The muted browns of the broadcast give way to technicolor

As flocks of pheasants flapped about the flat.

The fleet-footed fledglings found flight

With flecked feathers effervescent in the light.

A freakish sight, the cabin was sent into a spiral

An enraging but seemingly not uncommon occurrence.

The chorus of coos offset Abel’s chants of chastising, Leto’s cries carried

Off every wall in tandem with the chamber

And crack

And chamber

And crack

Of Cain’s rifle each shot ringing 

Out through my speakers ricocheting 

Through my home till each bullet blasted a bird

And Abel that battered boy got basted with blood 

And the hounds mouths start to water 

As they start to tear into his clothes 

Except their mouths are too full to only be coming away with fabric

I don’t know what the plot is anymore

Only that these damn birds are mucking up the place

And there are down feathers littering my living room

Abel’s blood is pouring out, pushing out in spurts straight through the screen

Spilling over onto my floor, staining my feet

But I don’t even notice, in fact there’s not a fearful feeling in me,

I’ve been chanting, jibbering on in harmony with each of Abel’s gurgles

As the scratching started at my door, There was a swinging creak

Once it opened, I became acutely aware of how stickily sanguine my skin was.