Slake Thirst

He always went out on yellow alert,

this cabron with the .45 snug

against the small of his back. The barrio

in decline, he'd run off thieves and junkies

in the night. We said we'd write a film

about right-wing extremists stealing

a warhead but never did. His sad corrido

for mock terrorist attacks and gas raids filled the cab

of the DOE truck with dust and laughter.

I was along to write a report.

I could have said as much about the son

who almost died of heroin, or the wife

refusing cancer treatments to make him pay

for his infidelities.

 

He lived for the adrenaline rush. But I wonder

if the job's stress wore a hole in his life

or if he drank that bottle just to eat

the worm at the bottom. He left the frayed and brown

family history in my office, but we never talked about it.

Those roots in the land,

in time, torn up by the war machine he never questioned,

the nuclear winds and blinding light he thought he could ride

like a bronco busting legend. Or was the question there,

hidden, an unfinished addition to the adobe home,

its uneven walls uneven testimony to his loyalty

for those secrets he'd kill me for if he told me,

he said smiling. I laughed. It was that laugh sharpened

on the edge of despair and paranoia that I loved.

 

We won the war and now the world's free for democracy

and gain. The smoothed over graves of toxic waste

and chemicals haunt the imaginations of the unwise.

He will only divulge what he knows in epigrams

and sad stories learned at his grandmother's knee.

I heard in his voice the struggle that puts

the world back on its hinge, balanced in that

ever disappearing stream whose reality we cannot doubt

since it is where we slake our thirst.


 

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