A New Thing In Another World: Poems ~ Billy Malanga
Wildcats In The Cave
I heard bickering coming from the basement,
about not wanting to go to school, about
responsibility, test scores, endless self doubt,
and the oncoming storm of eighteen.
Then, my wife’s battle scream from
the Neolithic edge of the cave.
A shriek so wild and prehistoric, it came
from deep inside her ancient warm bloodedness.
Mother and kitten marking pieces of territorial
highland and mother not backing down.
It made the dog whine and me spill my coffee.
It reminded me of our basic instinctual leftovers
that have lingered for thousands of years.
If she was going down into the dirt, she was giving
her the whole deal, eye to eye, ears back, and
flea claws out.
My wife roared that morning for the ultimate good
of the kitten. She left her biogenetic scent through
her claws like two steel smoking revolvers.
Hell, there was plenty of food in the den
but, this was bigger than habitation. This was
hardwired wildcat development that has carried us
out of Mongolian caves and across the snow
packed mountains by the neck.
It leaped from her sharp teeth and into the face
of humanity, downstairs where spiders and pipes
move things around.
Mother wildcat got things right with her kitten.
One Thing In One World
There’s a voice that gets pulled
through the screen door, on a late
afternoon breeze as I sip my wine.
It retells of punctuality, anger and
unbending burden. It retells
of a time when being busy meant
pushing hard things further down
as normal.
The screw-ups and successes,
making it through the deadline years
for better or worse, then and now.
My steel armor has been removed.
I am older, grayer but less moved
by nonsense. I am not the same man,
he is gone. Now I stand in front
of a new world, a rich world
full of beauty and pain.
The voice gets pulled through
the screen door and I say to it,
I was one thing in one world, now I am
a new thing in another world.
Trophies of War
When my father returned from
World War II, he brought home
several reminders from the Pacific
with his stories and anger:
A wallet with several pictures of
smiling Japanese children.
A Hinomaru Yosegaki flag
signed by a Japanese family
for victory and good luck in battle.
An Imperial Japanese Meiji Arisaka
38 rifle with a Chrysanthemum
Throne stamped on its upper receiver.
I recall handling that rifle
in the basement, never upstairs
for all to see. Feeling its distressed
wood and cold steel with
my little fingers,
working the bolt, staring through
its elevation sights
at something bigger than me.
The destruction it survived,
the destruction he survived.
It took lives and saved lives,
a heartbeat at both ends.
I would connect the dots,
his outbursts and the weapon
they both grabbed me.
The weapon was the enemy
to him, I was just an outsider
but it drew me into how he
must have felt as he made his way
by vessel at age twenty,
onto a distant blood filled beach
disturbed with dead and wounded
Marines, unknown souls running
on fire from burning caves.
Screams, mothers and children,
chaos, young love.
I wondered about the things
that happened that were not
for polite viewing
or public consumption,
the things he would not discuss:
Who the rifle was issued to.
Who the young Tinian girl was
that he made love to.
Why she had disappeared.
Why 4000 Japanese jumped
off the cliffs of Laderan.
Who had signed the hinomaru flag
that would never return.
The children in the pictures
that would never see their father.
I wondered how he slept at night.
Raised By Wolves
There is a wolf at the base of my brain. Pausing, sniffing nose up,
picking things out of the remote sweltering landscape of ancient red rock
like a machine. It howls in the exposed barbed ether of cool dark gaps,
well arranged, spike toothed. It holds me.
Lupine phantom fangs grip my neck like a mother carries her young.
It walks inside a bloodshot abyss, under red cliffs, where it hides and licks
blood from behind my eyes. Its awareness extends beyond fur dark gray.
Sunrise is always most brilliant when it finds its way through red crevices.
I dream of bright yellow and green rays of soft light chasing me,
all the way down into the fractured running stream, where depraved
juniper tears my flesh.
Both of my hands circle and dot the sandy floor, where white water
once ran wild. Mad rocks plunge nearby, falling when they have had enough.
They slink and lay motionless below in fortified heaps. Blistering inflamed
dust dances with coiled devils. They can’t see or hear me.
I feel a clamping pain on my neck. Polished sharp incisors and soft fur
neatly tucked beneath a starched white collar. One generation teaches
the next. Up ahead, my invisible scars rest in a shaded gully where a lonely red winged black bird sings to my red wilderness.
Aporia
I drifted inside myself on a dark Alabama trail
while my Vibram soles munched dead leaves,
an overlay to my pulsating framework.
It felt good. Then, I thought a stick smacked
the side of my leg but it was something else.
Two hypodermic needles from the roof
of your mouth punched holes in my leg.
No rattles or warning shots,
just eyeballs snapped wide open and voltage
running through my veins like wild horses.
I never saw the hit coming.
You pulled both triggers at once and doubled
the recoil. Your choice to go in wet instead of
bone dry was costly. I noticed a Mississippi Kite
with black under wings circling above.
Your slithering forked tongue gathered particles
of reality. Your level of readiness inspired me,
it was like you were savoring my red fear.
You were coiled and I was vulnerable,
standing at the edge of a shallow grave.
I knew you would slither back into the wild
pine to reload, you had a habit of doing that.
Antivenin sat cold and still on forty-five miles
of indifference. Numbness and sweat filtered
my opinions about the world. This was no place
for bumper stickers. This was my aporia.
☺