The Sword withdrawn from the Stone.
It was December the 28th when Arthur returned to Earth
in a less than prophetic fashion.
He landed on a park bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts
atop clattering armor and cracked his crown.
“Goddamnit,” he screamed to the heavens before he reached behind himself
and withdrew Excalibur from in between two of his vertebrae.
My Love and I were holding coffee cups, empty except for the change
we had yet to be given.
He dropped his sword to the ground and took a minute to stretch
before he noticed our presence.
“Is this England?” he asked. “Have I returned to the land built in the blood of words?”
I shook my head. “Afraid you were misled,” I said.
“This is New England.”
Arthur began to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh away the metal
plated about his being,
until every piece had fallen to the bricks beneath our feet,
until the blood coating Excalibur had seeped deep
into the cracks and crevices carving the world beneath his toes,
leaving his body and blade naked and pale in the winter wind.
He laughed until his voice was the wind and the wind fell silent.
His smile inverted into a history written by the losers,
who could’ve won in the first place.
My Love gave him a hug to protect him from the icy cold
while I stubbornly clutched my empty cup of coffee.
“I shall start again,” Arthur said with bitter resignation.
“For this land is no different from any I’ve seen,
be it the mist of death or fantasy.”
I looked at his sword lying impotent on the frozen ground beneath our feet
before handing Arthur the empty cup of coffee.
He nodded his approval and clothed himself in its cardboard
before hoisting Excalibur above his head and stabbing the moon with its point.
His blood bled back from under the bricks,
pooling about his toes then knees then stomach then breast then throat then hands
becoming the scabbard around his righteous blade.
My Love wisely stepped away from his empty frame,
as Arthur lowered Excalibur’s point toward his stomach and stabbed it through,
the blood scabbard sliding back home between its vertebrae.
“Goddamnit!” he shouted again. “That smarts like a son of a bitch.”
He turned to My Love and me, our hands empty of empty cups of coffee.
With cardboard armor and his crown broken on the street
the once and future King stood up straight and said,
“Now, to get something warm to drink.”
Marijuana Pt. 1 & 2
Pt. 1
Arthur was very poor.
He did not hold any key to financial success,
just a combination lock
with twenty numbers.
This habitat suited Arthur’s hallucinogenic ambitions.
He required marijuana
like an angel,
wings;
a volcano,
magma.
To raise funds for his lifestyle,
he’d stand on street corners
reciting poetry.
Until even the trees
lifted their roots to leave.
Until the continents
pushed away from the sea.
I remember seeing him
at 3 a.m. one morning,
standing on the public garden bridge.
He cooed phrase repetition
to the pigeons roosting
in the trees departing.
“Saint Peter,
He knew me well
Shook my hand
and said, ‘Son,
go to hell.’”
Pt. 2
A wino beneath the bridge
applauded.
Beautiful Patio of the Universe
Arthur sat smoking cigarettes,
exhaling blue ink clouds
on a three dimensional globe made of gold.
The breeze flew in like Jesus.
The bricks swept clean by the messiah
as he saved the lost leaves
scattered across the terrace.
Arthur searched in vain
for a trashcan,
or bush, or mammal
to give an empty pack of American Spirits.
There was nothing but the heavenly air,
caressing the beautiful patio of the universe.
Rain
A boisterous sky
spat rain
at Arthur and I.
We huddled close
beneath a pink
Carebear umbrella.
It was two dollars
at the store
and two dollars
was all we had stored.
Arthur stared up
at the menagerie
of our purchase.
“Doesn’t one of these fucking things,
make the rain go away?”
Mr. Velvetears
Mr. Velvetears sounds so soft
you hardly ever hear
the shuffle of his feet
at the top of the stairs.
Always afraid of heights,
he refuses to come down
until the shaking subsides
and his feet stop stomping.
I wait patiently below
smiling at his stammer.
“It’s ok,” Arthur says beside me.
He’s right, I think,
it is.
Financial Feed
My love and I were deep in the cobbles of Cambridge,
when a tragedy befell.
A row of rogue ATM’s swallowed her debit card
and digested her account.
She called the bank to complain.
“Sorry,” was all they said.
“It’s the only way to keep them fed.”
Race
In the subway tunnels and platforms, one hundred feet
beneath the earth,
Arthur raced a three hundred-year-old man to the final bench
untouched by creature.
If it wasn’t for the blood-spurting shirt the ancient was wearing,
Arthur would have won.
“A shame,” the old man said once he was quite comfortably seated.
“I’ve got more practice.”
The Largest Margarita Ever Made
A storm of tremendous proportions
on par with a sprinkler seeking vengeance
caught My Love and I on a stroll.
The two of us laughed at the drenching
and smoked damp cigarettes,
throwing away dripping filters.
The storm escalated its intensity
Mangling our hair with its ferocity
My Love and I.
We picked a bar nearest to dry
And ordered the largest margarita
ever made for this world.
The waiter fearing for his life
quit the job for personal reasons,
only to die on the sidewalk begging for a drink.
The bartender agreed to the task
made one larger than a second,
but smaller than a year.
My Love and I swam in its tequila tides
Sprawled on its salt sand beaches,
until Arthur walked by outside.
He looked in the window
at our bare bodies bathing in tequila velvet
and shook off the clouds in the sky.
The sun poured into our inebriated sea.
My Love and me?
We toweled off with a pack of dry cigarettes.
Arthur stood sober still and spoke
of the thousand bones buried beneath
the bookstores of Mass Ave.
I shushed him like a stamped out smoke
preferring to remember the margarita,
instead.
- Boston Public Library
Hide and Seek
Arthur and I played a game of hide and seek.
I found him three years, two months, and one day later,
bundled under the covers of my bed
counting aloud “1, 7, 9, 5, 2, 6, 8, 4, 3-”
he paused and looked at me.
“You were supposed to come to bed.”
Subpar Co-star 