WOUNDED SCARS

    The Parris Island bus crashed, it was humidity mosquito bug silence, under the steam of old cotton fields, and the breeze of old Civil War screams, deafening beneath the Midnight lights, disorienting, elbow skies, heads shaved, shoulders pushed tightly, quiet tattoos, the pain, something about the sacred writings of bravery, and all the jazz trombones played in the 5:00am sky, every morning, and every morning I cried, every morning I counted the mosquito bites, every morning I mopped the sweat drops, counting the dirty braids, memorizing the blood soaked sands of Okinawa, and the mangled Coconut Crabs of Palau, singing to my rifle shots, shattering the jaws of baleen whales, where I coasted along, until the troy sounds of grenade launchers, I then ran between the hidden holes of bravery pinched medals, all along the forgotten hills of silver and bronze, and it was at that moment that I became the Philadelphia Boxer, I ate the liver of Gabriel's Rain, I could fight the fight in God's communion, and I would've made Lucifer proud, in fact I was his mercenary, and I scratched the skin of bloody dragons in the artist starved bars of Monterey, and I prayed to the Islamic God, and I still can't remember his name, and as I took my first step into the wicked shift, I met my muse, my almighty deity to the storm of acid rain inhaled through steel wired smoke, and he tossed me an apple with a worm and dared me to eat it, and by the end of 57 weeks I crawled park benches, angrier, mirrored to the eyes of rambling creative artists, this is why I found comfort in the sands, swimming in boiled water, 6 gallons pure, I dreamt under the Anthrax skies of a long walk across the rings of Saturn, my metaphor of cliches, I had just found out that my daughter had a birthday, only seconds old from the immaculate conception, no matter, I was the warrior poet, my stanzas had to breed, but I didn't know my liver would drain, I didn't know my legs would fall off from under me, the sand was burning, the wind spraying all around, all mighty deity, I needed You, you fought along side the Bear, your heart splashed on my sleeves, I saved the morphine shot for many years later, and the Bear cried for his cave in the Mardi Gras shores of Mobile, Alabama, he wanted to run to the stream, but he had no more legs, no more screams, and 9 years later I still think I can revive him, but the Salmon River was poisoned, the forest was Mercury, and now every time I meet a women, she is Venus, I am Mars, but my shirt never comes off, she asks why, I tell her it is the will of the Islamic God, but this is a lie, it is the scars, and I stab myself everyday, deeper and deeper, from side to side, inside and outside, now there is gangrene, it will have to come off, my soul is a stump, and I look at a calendar, I am a Buffalo, I am lonely, I graze the volcanic ashes of Kentucky French Bluegrass, alone, alone,

    Missoula Mohawks

    Poetic sea monsters of Lake Champlain

    The ice crystals on m face

    the radiation breeze of
    Anchorage, Alaska

    I really don't believe in
    monsters

    but I believe the black cats
    who stare under white sheets

    they know how to lick the
    blood

    I only know the sound of
    bullets

    which should be gently placed
    in the rotting tissue

    equally stretched

    in the crowded spider webs

    of my brain

    If I sleep

    will I dream of the Fjords?

    I hope so

    I desperately need a quiet place

      in the midnight snow

    even if I am
    a little bit lonely

    even if I am
    a little bit cold

      Stephan Baley
      Copyright 2000