King Arthur's Machete
i pulled up suddenly upon approaching a yellow light
jolting awake after a falling dream where i drove off
of the end of the bridge thinking of the visual cliff
thinking i’d miss the drop and drive over glass to
my mother’s grinning face i couldn’t tell she was
screaming telling me to stop often my dreams are
embarrassingly interpretable like a frost poem that
actually burns and i run waving my arms sliced
by branches hanging larger than their skinny torsos
a machete appears in my hand i swing not expecting
how much force it actually takes to sever something it
lodges right in the core of the trunk and i try to pry it
out sword from the stone thinking that i’d be safer even
with a weapon i couldn’t wield thinking about how
frost was proud that he’d managed to make himself
miserable demoting himself to a traveler that didn’t
even have a dragon to slay at the end of his journey
rather the disappointment of realizing success
doesn’t come until your obituary comes out in the
newspaper reading poet found dead halfway under the
underbrush of the road not taken the body already
many months gone rot beginning in polka dots like
mold on a piece of bread the fact being not
about death but about perception like if a face has
no eyes you can’t tell if it’s smiling or snarling